WASHINGTON — The U.S. military intends to broadcast the execution of Nidal Hasan via livestream when he faces an Army firing squad on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood, Texas, Defense Department officials confirmed Thursday.
Hasan, an ex-Army psychiatrist, was convicted and sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013 for the November 2009 mass shooting at a Fort Hood medical processing building. The rampage left 13 people dead and more than 30 wounded. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an interview broadcast Thursday on Real America’s Voice that the execution will take place at 1 p.m., the same hour the 2009 attack occurred, and will be made available for the general public to see.
“We’re gonna 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,” Hegseth said during the broadcast.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell stated earlier in the week that President Donald Trump approved the execution plan based on Hegseth’s recommendation, according to reports from CBS News and the New York Post. If carried out, it would represent the first U.S. military execution since 1961 and the first by military firing squad since 1945.
Unprecedented public broadcast raises legal questions
While U.S. capital executions routinely involve select witnesses such as victims’ relatives, legal counsel and journalists, public broadcasts of executions have no precedent in modern American history. Legal experts noted to CBS News that the last public execution in the country occurred in 1936, when Rainey Bethea was hanged in Kentucky before an estimated 20,000 spectators.
Geoffrey Corn, a law professor at Texas Tech University and former Army lawyer, told CBS News that broadcasting the execution turns the event into a spectacle from an era the nation had moved past. Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno pointed out to the BBC that a livestreamed execution has never happened before in the United States and raised questions regarding online platform guidelines and potential age restrictions.
Death penalty attorney John Mills told the BBC that the administration’s proposal sits on shaky legal ground. Mills noted that military law requires full appellate review and that Hasan could still seek federal court intervention, which would likely pause the scheduled execution.
The 2009 mass shooting
During his 2013 court-martial, Hasan represented himself and admitted to opening fire inside the deployment processing center. Armed with a handgun equipped with a laser sight, he fired on soldiers preparing to deploy overseas. Hasan argued he sought to stop American troops from deploying to Afghanistan, claiming he was acting to shield fellow Muslims. Investigators found 146 shell casings inside the facility, the New York Post reported, along with dozens outside where fleeing soldiers were targeted.
Prior to the shooting, Hasan exchanged 18 emails with radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was later killed in a U.S. drone strike, according to The Guardian US. A federal review headed by former FBI director William Webster determined that federal investigators should have scrutinized that correspondence more aggressively.
Hasan has remained incarcerated at the disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. While Hegseth indicated Hasan’s appeals were exhausted after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up his case last year, defense attorneys could still lodge federal civil appeals. It remains unknown which online platform would host the proposed broadcast or whether federal judges will intervene before Dec. 3.
