Livestreamed Firing-Squad Execution: Why the Fort Hood Plan Is Historic
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has set 3 December for the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad, with US officials confirming the procedure will be livestreamed. The Guardian
Hasan is a former army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. He admitted to fatally shooting 13 people in a crowded medical building at the base, and was sentenced to death for the killings. BBC He is from Virginia and has been identified by his full name as Nidal Malik Hasan.
The plan combines two rarities. The livestreamed execution is believed to be the first public execution in the US in almost a century. The Guardian Separately, it would be the first execution by a US military firing squad since 1945. Reuters A firing squad means a small group fires rifles at the prisoner at the same time.
Mental health experts said livestreaming an execution on that scale could cause post-traumatic stress disorder in the viewing public. PTSD is a lasting mental health reaction that can follow exposure to shocking or violent events. The warning followed Hegseth's announcement that the firing squad execution would be public. Dr Simon Duff, a forensic psychologist, an expert on crime and mental health, at the University of Nottingham, and Neil Greenberg, professor of defence mental health at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London, were among those cited. Greenberg advised people not to watch the livestream.
Historians and monitoring data place the proposal outside recent practice in comparable systems. Prof Rosalind Crone, a historian at the Open University in the UK, addressed the history of public punishment. Public execution in England and Wales was abolished in 1868. Only two out of 17 countries that carried out executions last year did so publicly.
The broader context here is how a state stages ultimate punishment, and for whom the staging is intended. A closed military execution enforces a sentence. A livestreamed execution adds an audience of millions, voluntary and involuntary, including people who encounter clips without choosing to watch. For specialists in trauma, that distinction matters. Viewing graphic death at a distance can still injure, particularly for children, for survivors of gun violence, and for service members and families connected to Fort Hood.
Looking at what this means for precedent, the questions are practical as much as legal and ethical. Like a broadcast that cannot be taken back once aired, a livestream creates a permanent record. It can be clipped, reposted, slowed down and scored with commentary beyond any control by the authority that produced it. It also tests the boundary between transparency in military justice and spectacle. Supporters of visibility may argue that the public should confront what the state does in its name. Critics, including the clinicians warning of PTSD, argue that confrontation is not neutral when the medium itself amplifies harm.
In my view, the international dimension will shape how this is read outside the United States. Public executions have largely disappeared from the practice of states that retain the death penalty, and the figure cited for last year, two public practitioners out of 17 executing states, will frame diplomatic and press coverage. That does not decide the domestic legal question. It does affect how allies, adversaries and international institutions interpret the signal Washington is sending about deterrence, resolve and the limits of state violence.
