President Donald Trump ordered an Army firing squad to execute Nidal Hasan, the former US Army major who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, the Pentagon said Monday. If officials carry out the sentence, it would mark the first U.S. military execution since 1961, according to Death Penalty Action.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recommended the order, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on X. The Secretary of the Army will choose when and where the execution takes place. “Judgment day for Hasan has finally come,” Parnell said.
What Happened at Fort Hood
The attack was brutal. Its toll has lasted. Hasan fired a laser-sighted handgun inside a medical facility at the sprawling central Texas base, killing 12 unarmed active-duty soldiers and a retired serviceman. Thirty-two others suffered wounds. Parnell said Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” — “God is greatest” in Arabic — during the shooting. Hasan later described the attack as retaliation for U.S. wars in the Muslim world.
The shooting happened weeks before Hasan, now 56, was due to deploy to Afghanistan. Police shot him as they arrested him, leaving him partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. In August 2013, a military jury found him guilty of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder, then sentenced him to death. That was 13 years ago.
A Widening Menu of Execution Methods
The order comes as the administration changes how the federal government can execute people. It recently added firing squad, electrocution and gas asphyxiation to the methods allowed for the gravest federal crimes. The expansion came partly because officials have found it increasingly difficult to obtain lethal-injection drugs, which have also sometimes proved challenging to use.
Those problems aren't theoretical. Last week, Tennessee prison personnel tried to administer a lethal injection to Christa Pike, but the attempt went awry. The death-row inmate survived, 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 earlier urged the Tennessee Department of Correction to consider another method, such as hanging or firing squad, citing concerns about establishing a sound intravenous line.
At least five states list firing squads as an available method, 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.
Opposition and a Rare Military Process
Death Penalty Action, which opposes capital punishment, responded sharply to Trump's decision. “There is nothing Donald Trump loves more than the power to kill,” the group said in a statement.
Military executions rarely happen. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, officials may not carry out a death sentence imposed by court-martial “until approved by the president.” The requirement makes the decision a direct presidential act, with no intermediary. The Death Penalty Information Center says officials carried out the 1961 execution by hanging, 65 years ago. The center reported that the apparent last known execution by a U.S. military firing squad took place “by musketry” in November 1945, 81 years ago.
Why This Matters:
The Hasan order shows how much weight a single presidential signature carries when the military justice code requires one. Hasan's crime killed 13 people and devastated families, and a full court-martial produced the verdict. But the order also arrives amid evidence that state killing is getting harder to carry out cleanly: drug shortages, a botched Tennessee injection last week, and an administration widening the list of methods rather than reexamining the practice. Critics like Death Penalty Action argue that bringing back rarely used military procedures, after 65 years, raises questions about accountability and restraint in using the state's gravest power. Whatever one thinks of Hasan, the machinery being reassembled will outlast this case.