President Donald Trump ordered an Army firing squad to execute former US Army Major Nidal Hasan, the Pentagon said Monday. The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recommended the order, which Trump approved, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on X.
“‘There is nothing Donald Trump loves more than the power to kill,’” Death Penalty Action, which opposes capital punishment, said in a statement responding to the decision. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military sentence can’t be carried out until the president approves it. The system leaves the final authorization with the president.
Who Holds the Authority
A military jury sentenced Hasan to death in August 2013, finding him guilty of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder. Trump has now approved the execution method on the defense secretary’s recommendation. Parnell announced the decision with the words: “Judgment day for Hasan has finally come.”
Hasan killed 13 people in a 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas: 12 unarmed active-duty soldiers and a retired serviceman. He wounded 32 others. At the sprawling central Texas military base, he opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun in a medical facility. Police shot him during his arrest, leaving him partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.
Hasan later described the attack as retaliation for U.S. wars in the Muslim world. Parnell said Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” — “God is greatest” in Arabic — during the attack. The shooting took place weeks before Hasan, now 56, was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan.
More Methods, Same Machinery
The Trump administration recently expanded the permitted execution methods for the gravest federal crimes, adding firing squad, electrocution and gas asphyxiation. Officials cited growing difficulty obtaining lethal-injection drugs; those drugs have also at times proved challenging to use. The expanded list gives the state more ways to carry out executions, while the order in Hasan’s case runs through the military chain of command.
Last week, Tennessee prison personnel tried to administer a lethal injection to Christa Pike, but the attempt went awry. The death-row inmate remained alive but unconscious and hospitalized on life support. Tennessee had planned to execute a woman for the first time in more than 200 years. Pike’s lawyers had previously urged the Tennessee Department of Correction to consider an alternative method, such as hanging or firing squad, citing concerns about establishing a sound intravenous line.
Military executions are rare. If Hasan is executed, it would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961, Death Penalty Action said. The Death Penalty Information Center says officials carried out that execution by hanging. The center reported that the apparent last known execution by a U.S. military firing squad took place “by musketry” in November 1945.
At least five states have firing squads on the books, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. South Carolina carried out the first firing-squad execution in the United States in 15 years in 2025. In Hasan’s case, the chain of authority is explicit: a military jury imposed the death sentence, the defense secretary recommended the order, the president approved it, and the Secretary of the Army will choose the time and place.