The US military is set to carry out its first execution in more than 60 years, and the Pentagon says it will be livestreamed. A military lawyer who trained at Fort Hood has explained why the case is unusual.
Army Major and psychologist Nidal Hasan is scheduled to face a firing squad at Fort Hood on December 3, after President Donald Trump signed off on the sentence on Monday. The Pentagon has confirmed the execution will be livestreamed. The US military hasn’t carried out an execution in more than six decades.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, told the Associated Press: “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public.” Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests or contacted the administration, he replied: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3rd.”
Lawyers call the livestream “unprecedented in the modern era”
John Mills, a lawyer who works with death row inmates, told the BBC the plan is “unprecedented in the modern era” and “on uncertain legal terrain.” Military lawyer Amy Bateman did her legal training at Fort Hood. She told KVUE she couldn’t say what the process would look like in practice. No firing squad execution has taken place in the US military since World War II.
The last military execution was on April 13, 1961. Army Private John A. Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, after a court-martial convicted him of rape and attempted murder. President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved the sentence, and President John F. Kennedy declined to commute it.
Four men are on death row at the US Disciplinary Barracks, Bateman said, and Hasan has been there the shortest time. Presidents have signed death warrants since 1961, but the military hasn’t carried out an execution. In 2008, George W. Bush signed one for Ronald Gray, who has been on death row since 1988, it never happened however.
Hasan’s crime in 2009
Hasan opened fire on the Texas base in 2009. Thirteen people were killed and 32 were injured. He walked into a building where soldiers were lined up for immunizations and medical clearance, shouting “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” as he started shooting.
He was court-martialed in 2013 and found guilty of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder. Bateman said Hasan was never prosecuted as a terrorist, and the crime of terrorism has never been declared in his case. She says that matters under the military legal code.
“He took a firearm in there and he intentionally killed all of those people, and he chose to kill his fellow soldiers,” she said.
She also believes the scope of the crime is “a little bit underestimated.” “There were hundreds of people there that day that were traumatized,” she said.
Bateman said she hopes the execution brings closure to the victims. She also wants the soldiers on the firing squad to be looked after. “What I really, really hope in the background is that whoever is involved in this, that they really, really, really think about how they’re going to care for the soldiers who take his life,” she said.
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