The public will be able to watch the recently scheduled firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, War Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed on Thursday.
Hasan, a former U.S. Army major and psychiatrist, was convicted and sentenced to death for killing 13 people and wounding 32 others at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2009. Since his 2013 conviction, Hasan has been held on death row at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.
The execution is only moving forward now after President Donald Trump authorized it, and the Army intends to carry out the death penalty in this particular case. The public firing squad execution will take place at Fort Hood at 1 p.m. local time on Dec. 3. The time is significant because Hasan committed the mass shooting during the 1 p.m. hour almost 17 years ago.
“It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks, and so he’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers as it should be,” Hegseth told conservative commentator Jack Posobiec. “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.”
The last public execution in the United States occurred in 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky, where a black man named Rainey Bethea was lynched before a crowd of roughly 20,000 people. He was convicted of raping and killing a 70-year-old woman.
The last U.S. military execution by firing squad took place toward the end of World War II in 1945, when Pvt. Eddie Slovik was shot for desertion in France, and the last U.S. soldier executed by the military was Pvt. John Bennett, who was hanged at Fort Leavenworth in 1961 for raping and attempting to murder an 11-year-old girl in Austria. Like Slovik’s execution, Bennett’s death was not public.
“It’s going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad,” Hegseth said. “It hadn’t been since World War II since we’ve done that. Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was win, which was understand when the enemy attacks, you need to stand your ground.”
Regarding Hasan’s planned execution, Hegseth said it was a “no-brainer” to let the Army kill the former service member. Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle directed the execution of Hasan on Tuesday following the president’s authorization last week.
FIRING SQUAD EXECUTION OF FORT HOOD SHOOTER NIDAL HASAN SET FOR DECEMBER
“The President has sole authority to approve the sentence of death for a military prisoner,” the Army said. “On Oct. 2, 2026, President Donald J. Trump approved the death sentence in this case. The President acted following completion of a full appellate process which upheld the conviction and sentence to death.”
The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for Hasan in March 2025, striking down his final appeal well over a decade after his court-martial conviction.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
