The United States will livestream the military’s upcoming firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, a Pentagon official confirmed — an unprecedented move that would make the December 3 proceeding publicly viewable.
Hasan is set to become the first person executed by firing squad under the US military since 1945. The execution is scheduled for a Thursday at 1 p.m. at Fort Hood — the approximate time, day of the week, and location of the 2009 shooting spree.
Hegseth Champions Public Execution
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has championed the push to execute Hasan by firing squad, said earlier Thursday on the Human Events Daily program, broadcast by Real America’s Voice, that he planned to make the execution public. He did not initially specify how.
“The Secretary is correct. It will be livestreamed. Details will follow,” a Pentagon official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Hegseth described the decision to carry out the execution by firing squad at Fort Hood as a “no brainer.”
“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public. Because people need to understand that … there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said.
Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests, Hegseth replied: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3.”
A Decade-Long Path to Execution
A military jury sentenced Hasan to death in August 2013 after finding him guilty of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder. He opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun inside a medical facility at the sprawling central Texas military base.
The shooting occurred weeks before Hasan, now 56, was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan. He was left partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair after being shot by police during his arrest.
Under US military law, a president must approve an execution by firing squad. President Donald Trump did so on Hegseth’s recommendation, the Pentagon disclosed on Monday.
“It hasn’t been since World War Two since we’ve done that. Well, kind of like the mentality we had in World War Two,” Hegseth said.
The White House declined to say whether Trump supported the livestreaming, referring questions to the Pentagon.
Rare Use of Firing Squads
The group Death Penalty Action, which opposes capital punishment, said Hasan’s execution would be the first military execution since 1961. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, that 1961 execution was carried out by hanging.
The last known executions by US military firing squads were in 1945, the center reported.
At least five states have firing squads on the books, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In 2025, South Carolina carried out the first such execution in the United States in 15 years.
Death by firing squad is one of several forms of capital punishment the Trump administration recently added to permissible forms of execution for the gravest federal crimes, along with electrocution and gas asphyxiation. The expansion of federal execution options was driven in part by increasing difficulties in obtaining drugs for lethal injections, which have also sometimes proved challenging to carry out.
Botched Execution Raises Concerns
Plans by the state of Tennessee to execute a woman for the first time in more than 200 years went awry last week when prison personnel botched attempts to administer a lethal injection, leaving death-row inmate Christa Pike alive but hospitalized.
Her lawyers said Wednesday she awoke “angry and confused” in a hospital. Pike remains very sick and shackled to her hospital bed, they said.
