WASHINGTON, Oct 9 — The US will livestream the army's upcoming firing squad execution of a gunman who killed 13 people at the Fort Hood military base in 2009, the Pentagon said, in what would be an unprecedented broadcast of an execution in the country.
Nidal Hasan, a former army psychiatrist, is set to become the first person to be executed by firing squad by the US military since 1945.
The execution is scheduled for December 3 at the same sprawling Texas base where Hasan opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun inside a medical facility. It comes amid heightened debate in the US over the death penalty following the botched lethal injection of a woman in Tennessee last week.
"It will be livestreamed. Details will follow," a Pentagon official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who championed the move to execute Hasan by firing squad, confirmed plans to livestream the execution in a post on X.
Media organisations have previously sought to televise US executions but have been blocked by the courts. Experts said no other country is known to televise or livestream a legally sanctioned execution.
Public executions have become exceedingly rare worldwide. Countries known to have conducted them in recent years include Iran and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
Extrajudicial lynchings in the US, often carried out by white mobs targeting Black Americans, remained public spectacles well into the 20th century.
The last legally sanctioned public execution in the US took place in 1936, according to death penalty experts. Thousands watched the hanging of a young Black man convicted of raping a white woman.
Hegseth told the Human Events Daily programme that the decision to execute Hasan by firing squad at Fort Hood on a Thursday at 1 pm — roughly the same time, day of the week and location as the 2009 shooting — was a "no-brainer".
"We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public. Because people need to understand that ... there's serious consequences for these types of things," Hegseth said.
Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests, Hegseth replied: "Don't care. We'll see him on December 3."
President must approve firing squad execution
A military jury sentenced Hasan to death in August 2013 after finding him guilty of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder.
The shooting took place weeks before Hasan, now 56, was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan. He was left partially paralysed and confined to a wheelchair after being shot by police during his arrest.
Under US military law, an execution by firing squad requires presidential approval. President Donald Trump gave his approval following Hegseth's recommendation, the Pentagon said on Monday.
The White House declined to say whether Trump supported the livestreaming plans, referring questions to the Pentagon.
Death Penalty Action, an organisation opposed to capital punishment, said Hasan's execution would be the first carried out by the US military since 1961.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the 1961 execution was carried out by hanging.
The centre also reported that the last known executions by US military firing squads took place in 1945.
"It would be extremely, extremely strange" to livestream the event, said Eugene Fidell, a lawyer, author and military law expert who lectures at Yale Law School.
Fidell said that while firing squads have a long history in American military law, livestreaming or televising an execution would, to his knowledge, be unprecedented.
He added that Hasan would have to file a lawsuit in federal court if he wanted to prevent his execution from being publicly broadcast.
"The Supreme Court has never addressed this question, and it's an interesting question whether the current Supreme Court would put on their originalist hat and say, 'Well, it was OK in 1790, so what the hell?'" Fidell said.
Jonathan Lurie, an author and historian of military justice, said there were no compelling reasons to make the execution public.
"What's the point of it? Who would want to see that?" Lurie asked.
At least five US states have laws permitting execution by firing squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
In 2025, South Carolina carried out the first such execution in the US in 15 years.
Execution by firing squad is among several methods of capital punishment recently added by the Trump administration to the permissible methods of execution for the most serious federal crimes, alongside electrocution and gas asphyxiation.
The expansion of federal execution methods was partly driven by increasing difficulties in obtaining drugs for lethal injections, which have also sometimes proved challenging to administer.
Plans by Tennessee authorities to execute a woman for the first time in more than 200 years went awry last week when prison personnel botched attempts to administer a lethal injection, leaving death-row inmate Christa Pike alive but hospitalised.
Her lawyers said on Wednesday that she had regained consciousness in hospital feeling "angry and confused".
They added that Pike remained seriously ill and shackled to her hospital bed.
