Pentagon Plans Livestreamed Firing-Squad Execution in Fort Hood Case
The Pentagon plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth disclosed the details in an interview with Real America's Voice. He said a firing squad will carry out the sentence at Fort Hood, Texas, at 1pm on Thursday, 3 December. A Defense Department official confirmed the execution will be livestreamed. Hegseth said people will be able to watch it and that it will be public. The Guardian
The case centers on Nidal Malik Hasan, a former U.S. Army major. He opened fire on the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood with a semiautomatic handgun. Twelve soldiers and one civilian were killed. He injured 32 people in what was described as the deadliest non-combat attack ever on an American military base. BBC
Hasan was sentenced to death on Aug. 28, 2013. The sentence followed deliberations by a court-martial panel, the military equivalent of a jury, at Fort Hood that lasted less than two hours.
The order setting the method moved on Oct. 6, 2026, when Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle directed execution by firing squad. U.S. Army If carried out, the execution would be the first U.S. military execution in more than 60 years.
Reaction in Congress crossed party lines. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy called the livestreamed execution plan "disgusting and medieval." Republican Senator Thom Tillis said Hasan should face the death penalty but opposed making his execution public and streaming it. Democratic Senator Patty Murray urged the Pentagon to revoke the livestream decision immediately.
Democratic Representative Betty McCollum pointed to the historical break. She said the Army has not conducted an execution by firing squad since World War II. She said the U.S. has not had a public execution since 1936.
The plan has also drawn attention outside the United States. New Zealand's national censor said it would be unable to block the planned livestreamed execution.
The broader context here is the collision between military capital punishment procedure and public display. The military death row population is small and executions are rare. A public broadcast would depart from the closed, witness-limited practice that has defined American executions for nearly a century. For specialists in military justice, the questions are procedural as well as political. Method, approval authority, and access rules all matter. Firing squad, while authorized, has not been used by the Army in living memory. Livestreaming adds a separate layer of review involving press access, base security, and distribution controls.
Looking at what this means for civil-military relations, the choice of venue and medium carries weight. Fort Hood is both an active installation and a crime scene in institutional memory. A public execution there would fix national attention on the Army as executioner, not only as adjudicator. Supporters of the death penalty in Congress have already separated the sentence from the spectacle. That distinction may shape the next phase. Calls to revoke the broadcast order leave Hegseth and the Army with two linked decisions to defend: whether to proceed on the December date, and whether cameras are present if it proceeds.
For what comes next, legal challenges remain possible. The facts disclosed so far do not resolve how the Pentagon would structure access, delay, or redaction, or how it would handle foreign requests to restrict viewing. New Zealand's position suggests limits on what allied regulators can do once a state actor publishes the feed. For Pentagon planners, that raises operational risk. Once streamed, control is lost.
