The Trump administration has set December 3 for the U.S. Army firing squad execution of Fort Hood mass shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, and a leading death-penalty expert says a quick, clean process could make the method a model for other condemned inmates across the country.
Hasan, imprisoned at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, was sentenced to death in 2013 for the 2009 attack that killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at the Texas Army base. Nearly 17 years later, judgment is finally moving forward.
President Donald Trump approved the firing-squad sentence on the recommendation of War Secretary Pete Hegseth. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell stated the decision plainly: judgement day for the convicted terrorist has arrived. The execution is scheduled for 1 p.m. CST at Fort Hood itself, the same base where Hasan carried out the massacre while shouting “Allahu Akbar.”
The Washington Examiner reported the White House authorization and the long-delayed accountability for the attack. Hasan will become the first service member put to death by the armed forces since 1961.
The Pentagon confirmed authorities plan to livestream the sentence. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made clear the event will be public so Americans can see the consequences of such crimes.
Hegseth told podcaster Jack Posobiec the point directly.
“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.”
Breitbart carried Hegseth’s remarks and noted the last U.S. military firing-squad execution occurred in 1945, with the last military execution of any kind in 1961.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin later defended the livestream plan against critics who raised radicalization or homeland-security concerns. Mullin stressed that no one is forced to view it and that he sees no elevated risk from the broadcast.
“No one has to watch it if they don’t choose to.”
He added that he does not see an elevated risk to the homeland from the decision. RealClearPolitics documented Mullin’s comments as the administration pushed ahead with full transparency.
The New York Post detailed the December 3 timing and location at Fort Hood, underscoring that the method was recommended by Hegseth and approved by Trump. Hasan will face the squad at the very installation where he murdered soldiers and civilians.
Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno, a leading capital-punishment scholar, told Fox News Digital that states already turning to firing squads as lethal-injection drugs grow scarce and unreliable could look to this military case as a template.
Denno said a successful outcome would matter.
“I think it’s highly likely that if firing squad is successful here and successful in quotes because we still don’t always know what a person is going through, but let’s say it’s a very quick execution, that it seems conceivable that it would be used on other inmates as well.”
Fox News reported her full assessment that the method is more certain, quicker, and the least inhumane option available. She noted an “endless supply” of trained marksmen among police, corrections officers, and skilled civilians, making recruitment far simpler than sourcing lethal-injection chemicals.
Idaho, Utah, and South Carolina have already embraced firing squads as lethal injections fall out of favor. Denno pointed to the practical advantages: certainty of aim, speed, and reduced chance of the prolonged, botched procedures that have plagued drug-based methods.
The contrast with lethal injection is stark. Last week in Tennessee, death-row inmate Christa Gail Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital. Attorneys described her as in critical condition before reports that she was recovering, conscious, and talking. Pike was sentenced for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen A. Slemmer in Knoxville. She became the first person in the modern era to survive a lethal-injection attempt.
South Carolina’s recent firing-squad case of Mikal Mahdi also drew scrutiny. Mahdi, who killed store clerk Christopher Boggs and off-duty officer James Myers in 2004, chose the firing squad over lethal injection or the electric chair. Myers was shot eight times and burned outside his home. After the execution, a forensic pathologist hired by Mahdi’s defense raised concerns.
Dr. Jonathan Arden stated the shooters missed the intended target area.
“The shooters missed the intended target area and the evidence indicates that he was struck by only two bullets, not the prescribed three. Consequently, the nature of the internal injuries from the gunshot wounds resulted in a more prolonged death process.”
Denno called that outcome troublesome and said it is exactly the kind of detail to watch on December 3. She stressed that with proper marksmen, such misses should not occur. Firing-squad history in America is sparse, incidents noted in 1877 and 1951 before the recent South Carolina case, but the method’s mechanical simplicity remains its strongest argument.
The last U.S. military execution took place on April 13, 1961, when Pvt. John A. Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth after conviction for rape and attempted murder. Hasan has sat on death row since his 2013 sentence. The 2009 Fort Hood attack remains one of the deadliest shootings on a U.S. military installation.
Victims and their families have waited through years of appeals and bureaucratic delay. The Trump administration’s decision, paired with Hegseth’s recommendation, ends that limbo. Pentagon officials framed the move as straightforward accountability for a terrorist who murdered American soldiers on their own base.
Denno’s core point is practical, not ideological. When lethal-injection drugs are hard to obtain or fail in practice, and when electric chairs carry their own controversies, a method that relies on trained shooters and produces rapid death becomes attractive. If the December 3 execution proceeds cleanly and quickly, other jurisdictions facing the same supply and reliability problems will take notice.
States already rewriting statutes to include firing squads will have a high-profile military example to cite. The livestream removes any claim of secrecy. Officials from the Pentagon to DHS have made the same case: the public can see justice carried out, or they can look away. No one is compelled to watch.
Hasan’s case also closes a chapter that began with 13 dead and 32 wounded. The Army base that endured the attack will host the final sentence. Timing at 1 p.m. CST on December 3 places the event in daylight and on the calendar in full view.
For taxpayers, lawful residents, and the families who buried soldiers after the 2009 massacre, the question has always been simple: will the system deliver the sentence a military jury imposed more than a decade ago? The answer is now yes, by firing squad, with cameras rolling.
A clean, swift military execution will not revise every state’s death-penalty statute overnight. But it will give governors, corrections officials, and lawmakers a concrete demonstration that an older method still works when modern drug protocols collapse. That is the opening Denno described, and it is the one the December 3 date will test in real time.
Justice delayed for a mass murderer of American troops is finally scheduled. If the rifles do their job without the failures that have haunted other methods, the rest of the country will have a clear example of how to finish the job.
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