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Trump orders military base mass shooter to be executed by firing squad
Story by Alisha Rahaman Sarkar
• 6h•
4 min read
Donald Trump has ordered the rare use of a firing squad for the execution of a former army major who killed 13 people in Texas in 2009.
Former army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan’s method of execution was approved by the president at the recommendation of defence secretary Pete Hegseth, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said.
Hasan opened fire at Fort Hood on 5 November 2009, killing 12 active-duty but unarmed soldiers and a retired serviceman and injured 32 people. He was sentenced to death after being convicted on 45 counts of premeditated murder in 2013 for opening fire with a laser-sighted handgun in a medical facility at the Texas military base.
The shooting came weeks before Hasan, now 56, was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan. Prosecutors said he was motivated by unwillingness to be sent to Afghanistan and the shooting was in retaliation for America’s wars in the Muslim world.
Hasan was left partially paralysed and confined to a wheelchair from being shot by police upon his arrest.
Parnell said the "judgment day for Hasan has finally come" and that the date and place of his death would be set by the secretary of the army.
Death by firing squad was one of the forms of capital punishment the Trump administration recently added to the list of permissible methods of execution for the gravest of federal crimes, along with gas asphyxiation and electrocution. The number of federal execution options was expanded in part because of increasing difficulties in obtaining drugs for lethal injections, which had also proved challenging to carry out for other reasons at times.
Hasan is one of four military inmates awaiting execution, which requires approval from the president and an appellate review.
Hasan's military execution is different from the majority of executions, which are legal in 27 states of America.
Execution by firing squad is rare in the country, with the latest being carried out last year in South Carolina.
In 2024, the South Carolina Supreme Court had ruled that firing squad, lethal injection and electric chair were all legal methods of execution. The court noted the firing squad was not cruel because a prisoner would not suffer longer than 15 seconds.
Brad Sigmon became the first person in the state to be executed by firing squad and the first across the country in 15 years. Mikal Mahdi was executed in a similar way on 11 April.
In all, at least six people have been executed by firing squad since the country reinstated the death penalty in 1977.
Since 1608, at least 145 civilian prisoners have been executed by shooting, nearly all in the state of Utah, according to the Associated Press.
Soldiers salute at a remembrance service for Fort Hood victims on the first anniversary of the shooting in Killeen, Texas, on 5 November 2010 (Getty)
Hasan will be the first person to face a military firing squad since the end of World War II. His will also be the first military execution, by any method, since 1961.
The last military execution, the Death Penalty Information Center said, was done by hanging, while the last-known execution by a military firing squad was likely carried out "by musketry" in November 1945.
Trump, a supporter of the federal death penalty, reinstated the execution method on his first day back as president in January 2025.
At least five states have firing squads on the books, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The Utah Supreme Court halted the scheduled 5 September 2025 firing-squad execution of death-row inmate Ralph Menzies.
Trump's approval for Hasan’s execution comes as plans by Tennessee to execute a woman for the first time in more than 200 years went awry last week.
Prison personnel botched an attempt to administer a lethal injection, leaving Christa Pike alive but unconscious and hospitalised on life support.
Pike's lawyers had previously urged the Tennessee Department of Correction to consider an alternative to lethal injection such as hanging or firing squad, in anticipation of the trouble executioners would face in establishing a sound intravenous line.
"There’s nothing Donald Trump loves more than the power to kill," Death Penalty Action, a campaign group opposed to capital punishment, said, pointing out that he oversaw more executions during his first term than any president since Franklin D Roosevelt. “Truly, this is just another distraction and a ploy to stem his record-low approval ratings."
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