Trump Approves Firing Squad for Fort Hood Shooter

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of former Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said on X that the Army secretary will determine the time and place of the execution. 

“Judgment day for Hasan has finally come,” he wrote.

Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun inside a medical building where soldiers were receiving medical checkups. Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 were injured.

Hasan said the attack was intended to prevent soldiers from going to Afghanistan and killing fellow Muslims. He made little effort to defend himself at trial, telling jurors that evidence would show he was the shooter and describing himself as a soldier who had “switched sides.”

Trump’s approval begins a series of procedural steps toward the execution. 

Executions are rare in the military justice system. Four men, including Hasan, are currently on military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The military last carried out an execution in 1961, when Pvt. John Bennett was hanged for raping an 11-year-old girl.

President George W. Bush approved the execution of Army Spc. Ronald Gray in 2008, but a judge halted it, and Gray remains at Fort Leavenworth.

Trump approved Hasan’s execution days after a failed attempt to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection led Tennessee’s governor to halt further executions in the state this year and order an independent review.

Trump previously resumed federal executions after an informal moratorium under earlier administrations. The federal government executed 13 people between 2020 and early 2021, making Trump the most prolific execution president in more than 130 years.

Asked whether the failed Tennessee execution would prompt him to seek changes to capital punishment, Trump called it “an interesting situation.”

“It shouldn’t be very difficult,” Trump said of carrying out lethal injections.