The cap­i­tal arraign­ment on July 20 of Army Major Nidal Hasan for the mur­der of 13 peo­ple at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009 has brought atten­tion to the death penal­ty in the United States Military. There are cur­rent­ly six inmates on the mil­i­tary death row, which is locat­ed in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In the last two years, four men have been removed from the mil­i­tary death row after their sen­tences were reduced to life. The Uniform Code of Military Justice allows the death penal­ty for 15 offens­es, but all cur­rent inmates were con­vict­ed of pre­med­i­tat­ed mur­der or felony mur­der. Unlike state exe­cu­tions, mem­bers of the mil­i­tary can­not be exe­cut­ed unless the President per­son­al­ly con­firms the death sen­tence. A mil­i­tary jury in a cap­i­tal case must be unan­i­mous in both its ver­dict and the sen­tence. The last mil­i­tary exe­cu­tion took place 50 years ago, on April 13, 1961. U.S. Army Private John A. Bennett was hanged after being con­vict­ed of rape and attempted murder. 

(M. Fernandez, ​“Major is arraigned in Fort Hood killings,” N.Y. Times, July 20, 2011.) For more infor­ma­tion on the mil­i­tary death penal­ty, see U.S. Military. The mil­i­tary death penal­ty is dis­tinct from the fed­er­al death penal­ty and mil­i­tary com­mis­sions, which have been set up to try sus­pects in the war on terrorism.

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