President Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, the former U.S. Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.
It would be the first U.S. military execution in over six decades — and the first by firing squad since World War II.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced the news on X Monday night, writing, "Judgement day for Hasan has finally come." Secretary of the Army Adam Telle said in an order released Tuesday that Hasan's execution will take place at Fort Hood on Dec. 3.
But Hasan could delay those proceedings if he files a habeas corpus appeal in the federal courts, said Robin Maher, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
"The fact that the president has approved Mr. Hasan's death sentence is another step closer to his execution," Maher said. "But that does not mean that his execution will be imminent."
For example, Ronald Gray, who committed multiple rapes and murders near Fort Bragg in the 1980s, is still on military death row despite having had his sentence approved by President George W. Bush in 2008.
It's not clear why the Pentagon is moving forward now, or why it specifically chose a firing squad as the execution method. But some death penalty experts that NPR interviewed suspect it could be connected to Tennessee's botched lethal injection of Christa Pike, which has dominated headlines and reignited debate over the past week.
"For years now, states have been pushing this rock of Sisyphus uphill … They're spending millions of dollars, and yet they're having botched executions," said Corinna Lain, whose book, Secrets of the Killing State, was published last year. "So this moment in time is one where states are really thinking about: what are we doing and what best serves the death penalty? Whether the answer to that is firing squad is another question entirely."
The White House referred NPR's questions to the Pentagon, which declined to elaborate beyond Parnell's post.
In his announcement, Parnell said Trump had acted on the recommendation of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said last September that he was "100 percent committed to ensuring the death penalty is carried out for Nidal Hasan."
"This savage terrorist deserves the harshest lawful punishment for his 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood," Hegseth told several media outlets, including The Hill, at the time. "The victims and survivors deserve justice without delays."
Hasan was working as an Army psychiatrist in Nov. 2009, when he opened fire at the Fort Hood processing center where troops were preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. He shouted "Allahu akbar" — "God is great" — before killing 13 people and injuring another 32. The attack ended when he was shot by civilian security officers at the scene, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
Hasan acted as his own lawyer during his 2013 trial, at which he admitted that "the evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter." The American-born Muslim said he had "switched sides" and turned against the U.S. because of its military actions in the Middle East.
The military jury found Hasan guilty on all counts. He was dismissed from the Army and sentenced to death, which triggered an automatic appeals process that ended only when the Supreme Court denied his final petition in the spring of 2025.
Hasan is one of just four people currently on military death row — all of whom were convicted of murder — according to the Death Penalty Information Center. They are all incarcerated at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
The military's last firing squad execution was in 1945
The first recorded execution by shooting on what would become U.S. soil happened in Jamestown, Va., in 1608, when one of the colony's early council members, Capt. George Kendall, was put to death for mutiny. Firing squads have been used relatively sparingly since, including during the Civil War.
"On the one hand, it is one of our earliest forms of execution," said Fordham Law School professor Deborah Denno, who has been studying execution methods for 36 years. "On the other hand, it's always been controversial because people associate it with extreme barbarity and … the Wild West."
The U.S. military last executed someone by firing squad in 1945: Private Eddie Slovik was shot for desertion in France, the only U.S. soldier to be executed for that reason since the Civil War.
"They didn't even tell his wife that he had been executed; they just said that he had died in Europe," journalist Charles Glass, who wrote a book about World War II deserters, told NPR in 2013. He said Slovik's case only became public knowledge about a decade later, when an investigative reporter published a book about it in the mid-'50s.
Most of the known U.S. military executions during World War II were done by hanging, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The last time the U.S. military carried out an execution of any sort was in 1961, when Private John Bennett was hanged for the 1955 rape and attempted murder of an Austrian girl.
"We basically have gone out of the business — until now — of executing people through the military justice system," said Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School.
The military officially suspended the death penalty after a 1983 court ruling, but reinstated it the following year and specifically designated lethal injection as the standard method. Fidell says that changed with new Army regulations in 2023.
"The regulation was changed to make the choice or the method of execution a matter for the president's discretion," he said. "And obviously, the president has, in this case, approved the use of a firing squad."
Under the current rules, once the president approves an execution, the secretary of the Army decides the time, location and method, to take place within 60 to 150 days.
Fidell said he was not surprised by Trump's approval, given his administration's embrace of the death penalty overall and the severity of Hasan's offenses. But he suggested some might find the social media announcement inappropriate.
"The military has lived without executions since 1961, and yet we have here a really serious case," Fidell said. "I think it would have been a lot better had a more formal, dignified means been chosen to disseminate this information."
The Pentagon hasn't held a formal press briefing since May.
The death penalty is already under scrutiny
Denno, who studies the death penalty, doesn't think the timing of the Pentagon's announcement is a coincidence.
Denno says Pike's case "is probably the worst that's ever happened." But it's far from the only botched legal injection in recent years, she says, pointing to what she calls a pattern of convicts being "tortured unnecessarily" that has prompted some jurisdictions to seek out alternatives.
The Justice Department made firing squads available for federal executions earlier this year, following a directive from Trump. Seven states now have firing squads on the books as an execution method, which Denno says is the highest number ever recorded.
Denno says firing squads are "the least inhumane method of execution that we have," since, when done properly, death can occur in seconds.
But she acknowledges that those have been plagued by issues, too, including last year in South Carolina, when an autopsy revealed that the shooters may have prolonged a prisoner's death by missing his heart.
"There is a humane way to take a life. It's called life without parole," said Lain, the author.
Lain says lethal injections, because of their relative lack of gore, have kept the death penalty "out of sight, out of mind" for many people over the last five decades.
But she sees signs of change. Data analysis by the Death Penalty Information Center shows that death sentences have declined by 90% over the past three decades. Fewer than 50 new ones have been imposed each year since 2015. A 2025 Gallup poll put public support for the death penalty at a five-decade low, with opposition highest among younger generations.
"The death penalty in this country is dying its own slow death," she said. She thinks the federal government's embrace of the firing squad, including in Hasan's case, could hasten it even more.
Copyright 2026 NPR