US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the public will be able to watch a former US Army major being executed by firing squad.
A US Department of Defense official told the BBC that Nidal Hasan, who shot and killed 13 unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, will be executed live.
It is believed that this will be the first public execution in the United States in nearly a century. John Mills, a lawyer who has long represented death row inmates, said the decision to livestream executions was "unprecedented in the modern era" and was in "an area of unclear legal basis."
"We're going to make sure people can watch it and make sure it's public," Hegseth said.
"People need to understand that things like this have serious consequences."
The Pentagon announced earlier this week that Hassan would be executed, which would be the first military execution in more than 60 years.
In an interview with conservative television station Real America's Voice, Hegseth said Hassan "will be shot by a firing squad of soldiers, and that's how it should be."
Asked if Hassan had made any final demands or had contacted President Donald Trump, Hegseth said: "I don't care. We'll find out on December 3rd."
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said on Monday (October 5) that the secretary of defense had made the recommendation and Trump had approved it.
The BBC has contacted the White House to ask whether Trump supports live broadcast of public executions.
Last year, more than 2,700 executions were carried out in 17 countries around the world, but only two countries carried out public executions.
According to Amnesty International, Iran is known to have carried out 11 public executions in 2025, while Afghanistan had six.
The U.S. Army Secretary said on Tuesday (6th) that the execution will be held on December 3 at Fort Hood, Texas. It would be the first military execution by firing squad since the end of World War II.
Hassan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist from Virginia, admitted that he was the gunman in the deadliest non-combat attack on a U.S. military base in history.
The shooting on November 5, 2009, occurred in a crowded medical building as soldiers about to be deployed were waiting for medical examinations and vaccinations.
Hassan apologized in court for "any mistakes". He told a military court in 2013 that he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Under military law, military executions require the approval of the President of the United States. In addition, it must go through an appeal review process, that is, the higher court will review the decision and make a final judgment on its legality before it can be implemented.
Mills said Hassan's appeals process has not yet concluded and he will likely seek a review of his conviction and sentence in federal court, which would likely provide a stay of execution.
As a result, Mills said he would be surprised if the execution actually took place.
He added: "Attempting to turn this into a live-streamed firing squad execution is nothing more than an attention-grabbing move by the Trump administration and is unlikely to actually happen, let alone lead to anything resembling justice."
Eugene R Fidell, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, told the BBC it was a "very unfortunate decision".
"Live broadcasting of executions is like going back to the Middle Ages. As a society, we should have moved beyond this practice, at least that's what I thought before today," he said.
Fidel said that if Hassan takes legal action, "the relevant proceedings will last for many years" and "well beyond Trump's tenure in the White House."
Some states require some form of public viewing of executions. Many states require reporters to be present, and the person about to be executed may invite others to attend. Other states allow ordinary people to voluntarily serve as witnesses.
But Prof Deborah Denno, a law professor at New York's Fordham University who studies execution methods in the United States, said: "There has never been a live broadcast of an execution [in the United States]."
Livestreaming the executions would "bring a level of transparency that our country may not have seen before," she said.
"More than half of the country supports the death penalty, although that share is declining," she said. "One could make an argument: 'If you support the death penalty, then we'll show you how it's carried out in this country.' People are going to have to really realize what's going on, rather than ignore it, as so many do."
Danno said live streaming also involves important considerations, such as whether there are age restrictions and whether it violates the policies of the platform hosting the live broadcast.
It's unclear where the livestream will be available. Most major social media platforms have rules prohibiting or restricting live streaming of explicit content.
The most well-known and widely used online platforms with live broadcast functions, such as Meta, YouTube, TikTok and X, not only prohibit violent images and videos, but also prohibit the display of death content.
Instagram, Facebook and Meta, the parent company of Threads, explicitly prohibit any live broadcast of executions.
TikTok also has a similar blanket ban. "We do not allow content that is extremely bloody, violent, or disturbing, especially content that may cause emotional distress to viewers," its policy reads.
Platform X has relaxed its content moderation policies after Elon Musk took over. Its policy states that content showing the moment of a character's death will be removed if requested by the deceased's family or authorized representative.
The BBC has contacted the above companies for response.
TRUTH Social, the social media platform owned by Trump, currently does not provide users with the ability to live stream videos.
According to Amnesty International, the countries that carried out the most executions last year were China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the United States.
While Trump has never publicly advocated for public executions, he has long supported the death penalty. For example, in 1989, he took out a large advertisement in The New York Times calling for the execution of the men known as the Central Park Five. The men were found guilty of rape and assault but were later exonerated.
After returning to the White House in January last year, Trump quickly overturned former President Joe Biden's moratorium on federal executions and signed an executive order aimed at "restoring" the death penalty and "protecting public safety."
