The Pentagon says the execution of the Fort Hood shooter will be broadcast live.
Author, News Department
Place of work, BBC Russian Service
Published 2 minutes ago
Reading time: 4 min
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the public will be able to watch the execution of Nidal Malik Hassan, a former US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.
A US Department of Defense spokesman confirmed this in an interview with the BBC.
Earlier, US President Donald Trump ordered Hassan's death sentence to be carried out.
“We're going to make sure that people can see it, that it's accessible to the public,” Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said Thursday. “Because people need to understand that there are serious consequences for such actions.”
Hegseth, in an interview with the conservative television channel Real America's Voice, said that Hassan “will be shot by soldiers. That's how it should be."
The BBC has contacted the White House for comment on whether President Donald Trump supports live broadcasting of a public execution.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell previously said the defense secretary made the recommendation and Trump approved it.
The execution is scheduled for December 3 at Fort Hood, Texas. This will be the first military execution by firing squad since the end of World War II.
Hassan carried out the attack at Fort Hood weeks before he and his fellow soldiers were scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan. He opened fire on soldiers at a crowded medical center where troops were awaiting screenings and vaccinations.
In court, Hasan apologized for “all the mistakes.” During his 2013 court martial, Hassan, who is Muslim, said he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
There is no precedent in modern history for a public execution, said John Mills, a lawyer who works with death row inmates.
“I think it’s intended to be a grotesque spectacle,” he said. “This decision is unprecedented in the modern era and comes on uncertain legal grounds.”
According to military law, military execution requires the approval of the President of the United States. To move the case forward, an appellate review is also required, where a higher court reviews the decision and confirms its legality.
The appeal process in Hassan's case is not yet complete, Mills said, and he will likely seek a review of his conviction and sentence in federal court, which will likely stay his sentence.
Mills said he would be surprised if the execution went ahead.
“Attempting to livestream the shooting is nothing more than an attempt to get attention from the Trump administration, and is unlikely to happen, much less bring any semblance of justice,” he added.
Some states require some form of public viewing of executions. In many states, the presence of journalists is mandatory, and the person being executed can invite people. Other states also allow ordinary citizens to voluntarily attend executions as witnesses.
But "there has never been a live broadcast of an execution," says Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University who studies execution methods in the United States.
According to her, when organizing a live broadcast, it is necessary to take into account age restrictions and whether this will contradict the policies of the online platform on which the broadcast will be conducted.
It is unclear where exactly the live stream will be available.
The last execution by firing squad in the US Army took place in 1961, when a US Army private was hanged after being found guilty of raping an 11-year-old Austrian girl. The execution was authorized by then-President Dwight Eisenhower and took place despite a clemency plea from the victim's family to his successor John F. Kennedy.
The last execution by firing squad in the US Army took place in January 1945, in the final months of World War II, when young US Army deserter Eddie Slovik was shot.
Although Trump has never openly supported public executions, he has long supported the death penalty. Since returning to the White House, Trump quickly lifted a moratorium on federal executions put in place by his predecessor Joe Biden and signed an executive order aimed at “restoring” the death penalty and “protecting public safety.”
