Trump Greenlights an Army Firing Squad for the Fort Hood Killer — the First U.S. Military Execution in 65 Years

In 60 seconds: President Trump has approved death by U.S. Army firing squad for Nidal Hasan, the former Army major convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. If carried out, it would be the first American military execution since 1961.

Seventeen years. That's how long the families of the Fort Hood victims have waited. On Monday, the wait moved a lot closer to ending — and in a way nobody saw coming. Not the lethal injection the jury was promised in 2013. A firing squad.

The U.S. military hasn't executed anyone since 1961. Its last firing squad stood in France, in 1945, for a desertion case. When the Pentagon announced Monday that the Fort Hood shooter will face an Army firing squad, it wasn't just news. It was history restarting.

What happened

On November 5, 2009, Army Major Nidal Hasan walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Texas — a room full of unarmed soldiers doing final paperwork before deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq — and opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun. Thirteen people died: twelve service members and one civilian, including a pregnant soldier. Thirty-two more were wounded. Civilian police officers confronted and shot Hasan, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, never denied it. At his court-martial in August 2013 he admitted he was the shooter and said he'd acted in support of the Taliban. A panel of 13 military officers convicted him on 13 counts of premeditated murder and sentenced him to death.

Then came Monday's bombshell. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell posted on X: "Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recommended — and President Donald J. Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan." The post ended with five words: "Judgement day for Hasan has finally come." Hegseth replied himself. One word: "Justice."

Latest verified facts

Confirmed within hours by Army Times, the Marine Corps Times, the New York Post, and CNN. The key details:

The approval is complete. This isn't a recommendation still winding through committees — both Hegseth and Trump have signed off. The only person left in the chain is the Secretary of the Army, who "will set the time and place of the execution."

The method is the news. Hegseth first said publicly he was seeking Trump's approval to carry out Hasan's sentence back in September 2025 — but every earlier statement was about the execution itself. Nobody had mentioned a firing squad until Monday.

No appeals remain. The Army Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the sentence in December 2020, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces followed in September 2023, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied review on March 31, 2025. Legally, the road is clear.

The history is stark. The last U.S. military execution was in 1961, when Army Private John Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth. The last Army firing squad was January 31, 1945 — Private Eddie Slovik, shot in France for desertion. Hasan would break an 81-year silence for the method and a 65-year silence for military executions, period.

Why it matters

Executions in America are a state business, carried out by lethal injection behind prison walls. The military's death penalty exists on paper, has been imposed a handful of times since 1961, and has never actually been used. Every president since Kennedy has let it gather dust. Trump just decided to pick it up.

And the method choice is a statement. Lethal injection was supposed to be the controversy-free option — then Tennessee's execution of Christa Pike went catastrophically wrong last month and the governor halted all executions for the rest of the year. South Carolina, meanwhile, carried out the first U.S. firing-squad executions in 15 years earlier in 2025. The firing squad is back in the American conversation, and the Pentagon just grabbed the microphone.

There's also a policy paper trail behind the choice. Reuters reported Tuesday that the Trump administration recently added firing squads, electrocution, and gas asphyxiation to the permissible forms of execution for the gravest federal crimes — an expansion driven in part by the chronic shortage of lethal-injection drugs. The firing-squad call isn't just theater. It's policy.

Impact on the USA and the world

For the victims' families, this is the closest thing to closure the military justice system can offer — an end to the calendar of appeal deadlines. That part of the story is human and real, whatever you think of the death penalty.

And internationally, this reads as a data point about American justice in 2026: a country whose lethal-injection protocol keeps failing, reaching back to a method it abandoned eight decades ago. Allies who abolished the death penalty will wince. Everyone will notice.

Related coverage: He Caught Tennessee Skipping Execution-Drug Tests in 2022. Now He's Investigating Why Christa Pike Survived · Two Ole Miss Students Were Found Dead an Hour Apart — Now a Father and Son Face Federal Charges Over 'Gas Station Heroin'

What happens next

The Secretary of the Army sets the time and place — that announcement is the next shoe to drop, and it'll tell us whether the Pentagon wants this done in weeks or is willing to let it breathe. Watch for whether Hasan's legal team attempts any last maneuver despite the exhausted appeals.

Then comes the part nobody's done in 65 years: the procedure itself. The media-access rules, the witness list, the choreography — every detail will be scrutinized in a way no civilian execution ever is.

One honest caveat: approval isn't execution. But "Judgement day has finally come" isn't the language of a government planning to wait. When it happens, it will be one of the most covered executions in American history.