Pentagon: Trump approves an Army firing squad for the Fort Hood gunman on Dec. 3. It would be the first military execution in over sixty years
The Pentagon said Monday evening that President Trump approved Defense Secretary Hegseth's recommendation to execute Nidal Hasan by Army firing squad. The acting Army secretary said the approval came Friday. The execution is scheduled for Dec. 3 at 1 p.m. local time at Fort Hood, overseen by the commandant of the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks. Hasan, then an Army major and psychiatrist, killed 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood on Nov. 5, 2009; a court-martial convicted and sentenced him to death in 2013, and the Supreme Court denied his last petition on March 31, 2025. It would be the first U.S. military execution in more than six decades and the first by firing squad since World War II. Death Penalty Information Center director Robin Maher said a federal habeas petition could delay it.
Military death sentences require presidential approval, and no president has given one in decades; several men remain on military death row. The choice of a firing squad, which the Army has not used since the 1940s, will itself be litigated.
For families of the victims, a 17-year wait has a date. For everyone else, it is a sign the administration intends to use the federal and military death penalty actively.
Hasan killed 13 people in an act of terrorism on a military base, admitted it and exhausted his appeals. The sentence is lawful and long overdue.
Choosing the most violent method, days after a botched execution in Tennessee, invites legal challenges and turns a closed case into a spectacle.
Dec. 3 is a date, not a certainty. Watch for a habeas petition in federal court in the next few weeks and for whether the Army publishes its firing-squad protocol, which will be the target of any challenge.
DailyDrop U.S. No. 1 · October 5, 2026