Pentagon to livestream Fort Hood shooter's firing squad execution on Dec. 3

The announcement

The Pentagon said on Thursday that it will livestream the Dec. 3 execution by firing squad of Nidal Malik Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the plan, and officials said more details would follow. A day earlier, Hegseth had said:

We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public.

A Pentagon spokesman said on Monday that President Donald Trump had approved the firing-squad death. Hasan walked into a medical building on Nov. 5, 2009 and opened fire with a handgun. Reuters reports that the execution would be the first by US military firing squad since 1945, and death penalty experts said they were unaware of any previous lawful execution that had been livestreamed or broadcast to a public audience.

Political reactions

Trump has not publicly commented on the livestream plan. At a White House event on Friday he said Hasan would be executed by firing squad, calling him 'a maniac', but made no comment on the broadcast. The White House has directed all questions to the Pentagon. Vice President JD Vance told reporters in Cincinnati that he did not know whether the livestream would happen:

I don't know that that's actually going to happen.

Vance added that if the livestream occurs, 'I'm not going to be watching it.' Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a frequent Trump critic who is not running for reelection, called the idea 'beyond disgusting' in a social media post:

Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do

A UN spokesperson in New York called the plan 'abominable' and said livestreaming the execution is tantamount to a public execution and could violate the convention against torture. Former US officials said a livestream would hand terrorists a recruiting tool, and a top US Catholic bishop called the plan 'barbaric'.

Legal questions

Experts see few ways to challenge the plan. Brenner Fissell, a Villanova University law professor specializing in military justice, said that other than Hasan, he was not sure anyone could have standing to stop a livestream. Army regulations state that 'No person under the age of 18 shall witness' a military execution, and Fissell argued that a livestream could violate the spirit of that rule:

I think it violates the spirit of the regulation.

Fissell said the regulations were not written to contemplate witnesses outside the actual site of an execution. Eugene R. Fidell, a Yale Law School lecturer on military law, said Hasan would have standing to object through a habeas corpus petition in US District Court but that he saw a very unlikely piece of litigation in an argument based on children watching online.

Public executions abroad

Amnesty International counted 2,700 executions in 17 countries in its latest tracking, and only two of those countries carried out the death penalty in public. Iran executed 11 people publicly and Afghanistan killed six. Iran led the report with 2,159 executions, though few took place in public. Amnesty reported at least nine public executions in Yemen in 2021 and said Saudi Arabia had carried out public executions in the past but not in recent years.

Reuters noted that the 2006 hanging of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was seen around the world through recordings that circulated online and through broadcasters, though it was not shown live. The Pentagon has said it will provide more details on the livestream, and the execution is scheduled for December 3 at the Texas base where the shooting took place.