President Donald Trump has approved death by U.S. Army firing squad for Nidal Malik Hasan, the former Army officer convicted of carrying out the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, the Pentagon announced Monday. The decision clears the way for the first successful presidential authorization of a U.S. military execution since 1961.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recommended the firing squad, and Trump approved it. Hasan, a former Army major and psychiatrist, killed 13 people and wounded 32 others when he opened fire at the sprawling military installation nearly 17 years ago. Witnesses said he shouted «Allahu Akbar» during the attack.
Hasan targeted a soldier readiness processing facility, an administrative building he knew would be filled with unarmed soldiers. According to witness statements, he carried a pistol and a.357 revolver to a mosque where he attended noon prayers before driving to the facility and unloading into what one account described as «the greatest density of soldiers.» He was eventually detained after a firefight with law enforcement and sustained multiple gunshot wounds, then was rushed to intensive care.
During a sanity board review, Hasan denied experiencing depressive, manic, psychotic, anxiety or cognitive symptoms during the attack. «I shot to kill,» he told the board, according to the report. He was court-martialed four years later and sentenced to death.
The case has moved through the military justice system for years. Because a death sentence was imposed, the case was automatically appealed to the U.S. Army Criminal Court of Appeals and then to the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. After a court upheld the death sentence in early 2025, Hasan's representation appealed to the Supreme Court, citing procedural objections to how the trial was run. That review was denied.
With Trump's approval, the Army secretary will set the time and place of the execution, Parnell said. «Judgment day for Hasan has finally come,» Parnell wrote.
The last U.S. military execution was carried out in 1961, when Pvt. John Bennett was hanged on April 13 after he attempted to murder an 11-year-old girl in Austria. President George W. Bush also approved a military execution, but a federal court halted it in 2008. Military executions are reserved for members of the U.S. armed forces and represent the gravest penalty available under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
During Hasan's sentencing, lead prosecutor Col. Michael Mulligan rested the government's case on the morning of Aug. 27 after two days of emotional testimony from surviving widows and parents of some of those murdered on Nov. 5, 2009. One witness, Joleen Cahill, said her husband, retired Chief Warrant Officer Michael Cahill, had given his life trying to stop Hasan. She described the devastation her family experienced after the shooting.
The Fort Hood Public Affairs Office explained at the time that Hasan's case would be automatically appealed, a standard part of the process for any death sentence in the military justice system. The long road through appellate courts has now reached its final stage, with the president's approval opening the way for the Army to proceed.
The attack remains one of the deadliest mass shootings on a U.S. military installation. Hasan's execution, if carried out, would mark a rare application of the military death penalty and the first presidential sign-off on such an execution in more than six decades.