In a historic and highly consequential announcement, the U.S. Pentagon has confirmed that former U.S. Army major Nidal Malik Hasan will be executed by firing squad, marking the first military execution carried out via this method in more than six decades. The 2009 mass shooting Hasan carried out at Fort Hood, Texas, remains the deadliest non-combat attack ever recorded on a domestic U.S. military installation, leaving an indelible mark on the American military community and national conversations about capital punishment.
Hasan, an Army psychiatrist stationed at the base, opened fire on November 5, 2009, inside a crowded medical facility where deploying troops were undergoing pre-deployment health screenings and receiving vaccinations. The attack killed 13 unarmed soldiers and wounded 32 more. During his 2013 court-martial, Hasan openly admitted he was the gunman, acknowledged he carried out the attack to protect Muslims and the Taliban amid the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and offered only a vague apology for “any mistakes” he made. A military jury of 13 officers ultimately convicted him on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder, and unanimously recommended a death sentence.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced the final approval on social media Monday, confirming that Secretary of the Army Pete Hegseth had recommended moving forward with the execution, and President Donald Trump granted formal approval. The U.S. Army will soon finalize the specific time and location for the sentence to be carried out. “Judgement day for Hasan has finally come,” Parnell wrote in a post on X.
Under U.S. military law, any military execution requires explicit presidential approval, along with complete appellate review and a final ruling on the legality of the sentence before it can proceed. Capital punishment has had a turbulent legal history in the U.S. military: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces ruled the military death penalty unconstitutional in 1983, but then-President Ronald Reagan reinstated it via executive order just one year later. This execution will be the first military firing squad execution the U.S. has carried out since the conclusion of World War II.
Currently, Hasan is one of only four inmates held on the U.S. military’s death row. The method of execution chosen for his sentence — death by firing squad — is an extremely rare practice in modern U.S. capital punishment. The last firing squad execution carried out in the U.S. occurred last year in South Carolina, marking the first time the method had been used anywhere in the country in 15 years, and that was a state-level execution. Only four other U.S. states currently allow firing squads as a legal method of execution: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah.
The final approval of Hasan’s execution comes as part of a broader shift in federal capital punishment policy under the second Trump administration. Trump, a longstanding supporter of the federal death penalty, issued an executive order reinstating federal capital punishment on his first day in office in January 2025, reversing the moratorium on federal executions put in place by his predecessor, former President Joe Biden. The executive order Trump signed frames capital punishment as “an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens.” Today, 27 U.S. states, the federal government, and the U.S. military all retain capital punishment as a legal sentencing option, with the vast majority of executions carried out at the state rather than federal or military level.