Trump Orders Firing Squad Execution for Fort Hood Gunman

President Donald Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of former U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan, who was sentenced to death for killing 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting in Texas.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Trump authorized the execution following a recommendation from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The Secretary of the Army will determine when and where Hasan’s execution will take place.

Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, opened fire at a medical facility at Fort Hood, now known as Fort Cavazos, killing 12 active-duty soldiers and one retired serviceman while wounding 32 others. He shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the attack, according to Parnell.

A military jury convicted Hasan in August 2013 on 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder and sentenced him to death. Hasan, now 56, was shot by police during his arrest, leaving him partially paralyzed and reliant on a wheelchair. The attack occurred shortly before he was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan.

Hasan later characterized the shooting as retaliation for U.S. military campaigns in the Muslim world.

Trump’s decision comes after his administration expanded the methods available for carrying out federal capital punishment. In addition to lethal injection, permissible methods now include firing squads, electrocution and gas asphyxiation. Difficulties obtaining lethal-injection drugs have contributed to renewed consideration of alternative execution methods.

The order also follows a failed lethal-injection execution in Tennessee involving death-row inmate Christa Pike, who was left unconscious and hospitalized after prison officials encountered problems administering the drugs.

Military executions are exceptionally rare. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a court-martial death sentence cannot be carried out without presidential approval.

Death Penalty Action, an organization opposing capital punishment, criticized Trump’s decision. If Hasan is executed, the group said it would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961. The Death Penalty Information Center says that execution was conducted by hanging, while the last known U.S. military firing-squad execution occurred in November 1945.

Firing squads remain authorized in at least five U.S. states. South Carolina carried out the country’s first firing-squad execution in 15 years in 2025.