President Donald Trump has ordered an Army firing squad to execute former Army Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in a 2009 shooting spree, the Pentagon said Monday. Hasan has spent 13 years on death row since a military jury sentenced him in August 2013.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recommended the order, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on X. “Judgment day for Hasan has finally come,” Parnell said. The Secretary of the Army will set the execution’s time and place.
The Crime and the Verdict
The facts of the case haven’t changed in 17 years. Hasan opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun inside a medical facility at the sprawling central Texas base. He killed 12 unarmed active-duty soldiers and a retired serviceman. Thirty-two others were wounded. Parnell said Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the attack. Hasan later described the shooting as retaliation for U.S. wars in the Muslim world.
The attack took place weeks before Hasan, now 56, was due to deploy to Afghanistan. Police shot him while arresting him, leaving him partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. A military jury found him guilty on 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder, then sentenced him to death.
The Legal Machinery
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a death sentence imposed by court-martial may not be carried out “until approved by the president.” That requirement put the decision squarely on Trump’s desk. He acted on it.
Military executions are rare. If Hasan is executed, it would mark the first U.S. military execution since 1961, according to Death Penalty Action. The Death Penalty Information Center says officials carried out that 1961 execution by hanging. The apparent last known execution by a U.S. military firing squad took place “by musketry” in November 1945, 81 years ago.
Why a Firing Squad
The administration recently added firing squad, electrocution and gas asphyxiation to the permitted methods for executing people convicted of the gravest federal crimes. Officials expanded the options partly because lethal-injection drugs have grown harder to obtain and, at times, harder to use.
The problem isn’t theoretical. Last week, Tennessee prison personnel attempted to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection, but the procedure went awry. The death-row inmate remained alive but unconscious and was 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 state’s Department of Correction to consider an alternative such as hanging or firing squad, citing concerns about establishing a sound intravenous line.
States aren’t standing still, either. 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.
The Opposition
Critics weren’t quiet. Death Penalty Action, which opposes capital punishment, said in a statement: “There is nothing Donald Trump loves more than the power to kill.” The group’s position matches its stated opposition to the death penalty in all cases.
The Pentagon hasn’t set a date. The Secretary of the Army will make that decision.
Why This Matters:
The case tests whether officials will carry out a sentence that a military jury handed down more than a decade ago. Hasan was convicted on 45 counts after a trial, and the sentence has waited 13 years for presidential approval. For those who believe criminal punishment should match the gravity of the crime and verdicts should mean something, the order restores finality to a case involving 13 dead and 32 wounded. It also shows how practical constraints shape policy. When lethal-injection drugs are scarce and a Tennessee attempt left an inmate on life support, officials expanded the menu of lawful methods. Legal and political fights over those methods are likely, but the rule-of-law question here is simple: a jury decided, and the process required presidential sign-off.