In confirming his plans to live-stream Fort Hood mass shooter Nidal Malik Hasan’s military execution by firing squad on Dec. 3, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called it a “no brainer” punishment for a “radical Islamist terror attack” on U.S. service members. Others across the country and around the world — Democrats and Republicans, human rights experts, legal scholars and military and religious leaders — condemned it as a barbaric throwback to an era when executions were cast as entertainment, and as the world’s leading democracy adopting a form of punishment carried out in modern times only by authoritarian regimes and terrorist organizations. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) wrote on X.
It should not be happening in America.” “I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do. America is better than that,” Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) wrote.
The United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights said that “the livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture.” The head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said it would “further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people.” Matthew Robinson, a criminal justice professor at Appalachian State University and author of a book on U.S. capital punishment titled “Death Nation,” said he was “appalled” by the plans. Hasan was an Army psychiatrist and major who in 2009 entered a medical building on the Texas military base with a laser-sighted handgun, shouted “Allahu akbar” — Arabic for “God is great!” — and opened fire, killing 13 people and injuring 32 others.
He has since spoken of being a “martyr” if executed. President Trump, an outspoken proponent of the death penalty for years but also a past critic of public executions in places like Iran, has signed off on Hasan’s execution but not addressed Hegseth’s plans. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Vice President JD Vance, who is Catholic, said Friday that people should remember that Hasan “brutally murdered a lot of innocent people.” But he also said he would not watch a live-stream of the execution, and expressed doubt that is “actually going to happen.” On his first day in office this term, Trump issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to restore the death penalty to prominence. Department of Justice announced it had taken steps to do so, including by “expanding the protocol” to include firing squads. Five states currently allow firing squads to carry out executions: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah.
Supreme Court has repeatedly turned down appeals contending such executions amount to “cruel and unusual punishment,” which is barred under U.S. law. South Carolina executed three men by firing squad last year. When the Supreme Court last year rejected an Alabama inmate’s request to be killed by firing squad rather than with nitrogen hypoxia, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor — joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented, writing, “Boyd asks for the barest form of mercy: to die by firing squad, which would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to four minutes.
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