Nearly 17 years after the Fort Hood massacre, President Trump has approved the military’s most consequential step yet toward carrying out the death sentence of Nidal Malik Hasan.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced Monday night that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recommended execution by U.S. Army firing squad and that President Trump approved it.
The Secretary of the Army will now determine the time and place.
This is the official announcement:
“Judgement day for Hasan has finally come,” Parnell wrote.
Hasan, then an Army major and psychiatrist, opened fire inside the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009. Thirteen people were killed and 32 others were wounded.
At his 2013 court-martial, Hasan acknowledged that he was the shooter. A military jury convicted him of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder before sentencing him to death.
The United States Army reported at the time that the panel reached its death sentence after hearing two days of emotional testimony from survivors and relatives of those murdered. The sentence also included dismissal from the service and forfeiture of all pay and allowances.
For years, that death sentence remained trapped in the extraordinarily slow military capital-punishment process.
Hasan pursued the automatic military appeals that follow every court-martial death sentence. He later asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case, but the justices declined in 2025.
Hegseth publicly moved to revive the case last year. President Trump’s approval now clears a major constitutional and military-justice threshold that only the commander in chief can satisfy.
Rapid Response 47 highlighted the scale of the decision:
But presidential approval does not necessarily mean an execution will happen immediately.
The Army Lawyer explained earlier this year that military capital cases move through automatic service-court review, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, possible Supreme Court review, presidential approval, and then potential collateral challenges in civilian federal court.
That last route matters. Hasan may still seek habeas corpus relief in federal court, a move that could delay the execution while judges consider new constitutional or procedural claims.
The military review also explains why presidential action is required before a death sentence can be carried out. Once that approval is signed, the service secretary issues the execution order and designates the time, place, and method.
Hasan is one of only four prisoners on the military’s death row, making his case exceptional even within the already rare world of military capital punishment.
The history shows how difficult these cases are to finish.
President George Walker Bush approved the execution of former Army specialist Ronald Gray in 2008.
A federal judge later stayed it, and Gray remains on military death row.
The United States military has not executed a service member since 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth.
The last military execution by firing squad occurred even earlier.
ABC News underscored just how rare this moment is:
CBS News notes that Hasan represented himself at trial and offered almost no conventional defense. His court-appointed standby attorneys told the judge they feared he was deliberately steering the case toward a death sentence.
Hasan had already admitted responsibility before the panel heard the evidence. He claimed he attacked fellow soldiers to stop them from deploying against Islamist forces overseas, a position that left little doubt about who committed the massacre.
The Supreme Court rejected Hasan’s request for review in 2025. His petition argued that the trial judge violated his right to a public proceeding when the courtroom was cleared for discussions about conflicts with his standby lawyers.
The high court’s refusal ended that round of direct appeals. Any attempt to stop the execution now would have to come through the narrower civilian habeas process or another extraordinary legal challenge.
That history makes the announcement more than a change in execution method. It is the first time the federal government has pushed Hasan’s sentence this close to a final date.
The Fort Hood families have already waited through nearly 17 years of investigations, a court-martial, appeals, and political hesitation.
Federal courts may still hear a collateral challenge, but the executive branch has made its position unmistakable: this administration intends to carry out the sentence.
It does.
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[ H/T WLT Report ]
