US to livestream firing squad execution of Fort Hood gunman

The United States will livestream the army’s firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 people at the Fort Hood military base in 2009, the Pentagon said, in what would be the first broadcast of a US execution.

“It will be livestreamed. Details will follow,” a Pentagon official told Reuters on condition of anonymity, Dawn reported. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who championed the push to execute Hasan by firing squad, confirmed the plan in a post on X.

The execution

Hasan, a former army psychiatrist now aged 56, is set to be the first person executed by firing squad by the US military since 1945. The execution is scheduled for December 3 at Fort Hood in Texas, the base where he opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun in a medical facility.

Hegseth said choosing a Thursday at 1pm at Fort Hood, close to the time, day and place of the 2009 shooting, was a “no-brainer”. “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,” he said. Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests, he replied: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3.”

The case

• A military jury sentenced Hasan to death in August 2013 after convicting him on 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder.
• The 2009 attack killed 13 people and wounded 31, weeks before he was due to deploy to Afghanistan.
• Police shot Hasan during his arrest, leaving him partially paralysed and in a wheelchair.
• Under US military law, the president must approve a firing squad execution. President Donald Trump did so on Hegseth’s recommendation, the Pentagon said.

The White House declined to say whether Trump supported the livestream. The group Death Penalty Action said it would be the first US military execution since 1961, which was carried out by hanging.

‘Who would want to see that?’

Experts said no other country is known to televise or livestream a legal execution. Media have tried to broadcast US executions before but have been blocked by courts. The last legally sanctioned public execution in the US was a hanging in 1936, watched by thousands.

“It would be extremely, extremely strange” to livestream the event, said Eugene Fidell, a military law expert who lectures at Yale Law School. He said Hasan would have to sue in federal court to block a public display of his death, a question the Supreme Court has never addressed.

“What’s the point of it? Who would want to see that?” asked military justice historian Jonathan Lurie.

Death penalty debate

The plan comes amid heightened debate over capital punishment in the US. Last week, Tennessee prison staff botched a lethal injection meant to execute Christa Pike, leaving her alive and in hospital. Her lawyers said she woke “angry and confused” and remains very sick and shackled to her hospital bed.

The Trump administration has recently added firing squads, electrocution and gas asphyxiation to the permitted methods of execution for the gravest federal crimes, partly because of growing difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs. At least five US states have firing squads on the books, and South Carolina carried out the country’s first firing squad execution in 15 years in 2025.

This article draws on reporting by Dawn and Reuters.