Nidal Hasan May Be Executed on December 3 by Firing Squad; First Military Execution in 65 Years

The U.S. Army has set an execution date of December 3 for Nidal Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people in a mass shooting on the Fort Hood military base in 2009. The announcement comes after President Donald Trump approved Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s recommendation to put Mr. Hasan to death by firing squad. The execution will take place at Fort Hood in Texas. However, Mr. Hasan is constitutionally entitled to pursue appellate review of his death sentence in civilian federal courts, which would indefinitely delay the execution. 

The U.S. military has its own legal system, including the death penalty, for crimes committed by service members. However, the military death penalty has been used sparsely outside times of war. Mr. Hasan is one of only four people on the military’s death row and would be the first executed in 65 years. The last military execution, in 1961, occurred by hanging, which is no longer used by any American jurisdiction, and was imposed for rape, which is no longer death-eligible under Supreme Court precedent. 

Mr. Hasan’s execution would be the first conducted by a military firing squad since World War II. Like the military death penalty itself, the firing squad is rare: it has been used in just six modern executions (0.4%) in two states. Earlier this year, the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice proposed using the firing squad (and other methods) in federal executions, amidst nationwide issues procuring and administering lethal injection drugs. President Trump has long sought an increase in use of the death penalty, and authorized a record-breaking 13 federal executions in the waning days of his first term.

Mr. Hasan killed 13 fellow service members and wounded 32 in the shooting on November 5, 2009, three weeks before he was set to deploy to Afghanistan. He had served in the Army for 21 years and rose to the rank of major, working as a psychiatrist counseling soldiers with PTSD, which acquaintances and experts believed contributed to the deterioration of his mental state. He described his attack as retaliation for the U.S. military’s violence against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was shot and paralyzed from the chest down by responders, and later represented himself in his military court-martial against the advice of counsel.

Mr. Hasan is the tenth military veteran scheduled for execution this year. Learn more about the military death penalty here, and learn more about veterans sentenced to death in DPI’s 2025 report, Forgotten Service, Lasting Wounds.