When Nidal Hasan is put to death by firing squad during a public livestream, he will become the first person to be publicly executed in the United States in nearly a century. The Defense Department announced Thursday the execution of Hasan, the ex-Army major who was convicted in the 2009 killings of 13 people at Fort Hood, will be livestreamed on Dec. 3. Hasan is paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair after being shot in the back by police who responded to the mass shooting.
"He's gonna get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Jack Posobiec on Real America's Voice. "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 decision has generated widespread, bipartisan criticism. The list of countries that still carry out public executions, whether on video or in a public place, is very short and almost entirely countries accused of human rights violations.
Afghanistan and Iran are the only two known countries to execute anyone publicly in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, according to Amnesty International. Yemen publicly executed multiple people in 2021, according to the group. "Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it?
Beyond disgusting," Republican Sen. "Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America." Two public executions in the mid-1930s are considered to be the last public uses of the death penalty in the United States.
The last large-scale example of a public execution in the United States was Rainey Bethea in 1936. The crowd on hand to watch the hanging was estimated at 20,000 people, according to a local newspaper at the time. Bethea was accused of raping and murdering a 70-year-old woman in her home in Owensboro, Kentucky, in June 1936.
He accidentally left his recognizable prison ring at the scene, and confessed to the crime several times, though he did recant during a failed appeal. He was never convicted of murder, only rape, which still carried the death penalty. Bethea, who was 26 years old, was hanged on Aug. 14, 1936.
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