President Donald Trump has approved the execution of Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist found guilty of killing 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting, and the Pentagon said Monday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had recommended it. The method chosen is a firing squad.
On Nov. 5, 2009, Army psychiatrist Hasan fired his weapon at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood. The attack left 12 soldiers and one civilian dead before he was shot, severely wounded, and arrested. Hasan was found guilty of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder in 2013, and was handed a death sentence. He remains in military custody at a detention center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Among those held under sentence of death by the Army’s judicial system, he is one of four.
The Execution Plan
Presidential approval must come first before an execution can take place, and army rules set tight limits around it: the event must occur within 150 days after that approval, though not any sooner than 60 days. No word has yet been given on either the timing or the location of Hasan’s execution.
ABC News reported in June that the Army was working on plans for military executions. Documents and people familiar with the effort revealed a plan known as “Operation Resolute Justice.”. Under that plan, Army officials would work together with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to move condemned prisoners from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to the federal execution facility in Terre Haute, Indiana. The Justice Department conducted non-military federal executions during Trump’s first term at that same facility.
According to army rules, a minimum of two news organizations must be picked to watch the execution.
A Long Gap in Military Executions
Since Pvt. John Bennett was executed for the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl in Austria, the military has not carried out another service member’s execution. That happened during 1961.
Where the paper stands
The paper backs the death sentence for Nidal Hasan and is against any policy that would let him escape it. The case is simple: Hasan murdered 13 people in cold blood, and the law has found him guilty and sentenced him accordingly.
The paper supports strict, certain punishment for violent crime, and the Fort Hood attack fits that description exactly. Hasan was charged with violent crimes, and the sentence carries with it no possibility of escape through cashless bail or lenient sentencing.
What matters now is that the sentence is carried out without delay, as the law requires. The paper will continue to support whatever steps keep violent offenders behind bars until their sentences are served.
Key Facts Box
- 13 people killed, 32 wounded
- Shooting occurred Nov. 5, 2009
- Convicted 2013
- Sentence: death by firing squad
- Last military execution: 1961, Pvt. John Bennett
- Plan: Operation Resolute Justice
- Terre Haute, Indiana, execution facility
Source material: “Man who killed 13 in Fort Hood mass shooting to be executed by Army firing squad,” ABC News.
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