The military plans to livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, a Pentagon official said Thursday. The plan follows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's promise that the public would be able to watch. The official did not explain how the broadcast would work, and Pentagon officials said more details would come later.
Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle set the date in a memo issued Tuesday. "The execution of Nidal Hasan by firing squad will take place at Fort Hood, Texas, on Thursday, December 3rd, 2026, at 1 p.m. CT," Telle announced, a choice that returns Hasan to the post where he carried out the attack. The memo said President Trump approved the execution order on Oct. 2 and named the commandant of the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks as the execution officer.
Hegseth explained his thinking in an interview aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. "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," he told Jack Posobiec of Real America's Voice. He said Fort Hood was chosen because Hasan attacked there, and that the 1 p.m. hour was set to line up roughly with the time the shooting started.
If it goes ahead, the execution would be the U.S. military's first since Army Pvt. John Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1961, and the Army's first by firing squad since Pvt. Eddie Slovik was shot in France for desertion in January 1945. Reporters and victims' relatives are sometimes among the small groups permitted to watch an execution, and Army regulation calls for at least two media outlets to be picked as witnesses. But CBS News noted that modern American executions are almost never open to the general public, and the most recent public one appears to date to 1936, when a man was hanged in Kentucky.
CNN reported that a public livestream could potentially violate Army Regulation 190-55, which sets out the categories of people allowed to witness a military execution and keeps minors from watching. The Army's provost marshal general, however, may waive parts of that regulation as long as the waiver does not conflict with the law or a higher binding rule.
The Supreme Court declined last year to review Hasan's court-martial conviction, but he can still ask a federal court for habeas corpus relief, a step that could push the date back. John Galligan, a retired Army colonel who has represented Hasan for years, told ABC News that a habeas petition is "a distinct possibility" but that no final decision has been made. Military law experts told the Associated Press that such a filing could significantly delay the execution. "It frankly might outlast the current administration," said Eugene R. Fidell, a military law specialist and visiting lecturer at Yale Law School.
Under Army rules, an execution must fall no sooner than 60 days and no later than 150 days after the president signs off, which puts Dec. 3 near the front of that window. Galligan faulted the Army for moving so quickly. He also objected to holding the execution at Fort Hood, pointing to medical concerns about moving Hasan, who is paralyzed and uses a wheelchair, from Fort Leavenworth, where he is held. He called the decision to bring Hasan back to Fort Hood "political theater" and said making the execution public is "not great for the confidence in our system of justice." Geoffrey Corn, a former Army judge advocate who now teaches law at Texas Tech University, told CBS News that livestreaming the execution "raises significant moral questions, above and beyond the questions related to the death penalty generally."
Hasan opened fire on Nov. 5, 2009, inside a readiness processing center at Fort Hood, killing 13 people and wounding 32. At his court-martial he acknowledged being the gunman and said he had acted to support the Taliban. A military jury convicted him in 2013 of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder, and he was sentenced to death. A court-martial's death sentence still needs civilian sign-off, moving from the service secretary to the defense secretary before the president makes the final call. The Pentagon said Monday that Hegseth had recommended a firing squad and that Trump had approved it.
The Army has not revised its most detailed firing-squad instructions since 1959, and a service official told ABC News that it is quickly drafting a new procedure.