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The US Army directed the execution of Nidal Hasan by firing squad for December 3 at 1 p.m. CST at Fort Hood Texas following President Donald Trump’s approval of the death sentence on October 2 after a recommendation from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. This will represent the first military execution in 65 years and the first by firing squad since World War II according to an Army statement. Hasan a former Army major and psychiatrist was convicted in 2013 of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder for the November 5 2009 attack in which he shouted religious phrases while firing on unarmed soldiers preparing for deployment. The Pentagon described the pending execution as judgment day for Hasan who had admitted carrying out the shooting to protect the Taliban.[[1]](https://www.army.mil/article/295989/army_sets_execution_date_for_convicted_murderer_nidal_hasan)
A survivor of the Fort Hood attack Alonzo Lunsford who was wounded seven times told reporters that the firing squad seemed a befitting end for Hasan because other methods would be too lenient. Military regulations under Army Regulation 190-55 govern the process which includes the condemned wearing a uniform stripped of insignia and a target placed over the heart. One or more of the rifles in the squad may be loaded with blanks so that no shooter knows who fired the lethal shots. The choice for Hasan aligns with a protocol that has not been used by the Army in more than eight decades.
States and federal authorities have increasingly authorized firing squads because of persistent problems securing drugs for lethal injection a method that has been used in the vast majority of executions since 1982. The Death Penalty Information Center documented 64 botched executions over the past 50 years with 51 of them involving lethal injection as pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer barred their products from such uses. Idaho made the firing squad its primary execution method effective July 1 after a failed lethal injection attempt in 2024 while South Carolina carried out three such executions in 2025. Only five states currently permit the method though federal authorities encouraged its consideration in May as part of efforts to resume capital cases.[[2]](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/dpi-year-end-report-2025-majority-of-capital-juries-in-2025-rejected-death-sentences)
Firing squad executions are viewed by some legal experts as more reliable and instantaneous than alternatives despite their overt violence according to analyses from the Marshall Project. Law professor Corinna Lain at the University of Richmond has noted that the method has the lowest botch rate and is simple to carry out though it removes any medical pretense from the process. Autopsies after certain lethal injections have shown that prisoners who appeared peaceful may actually have felt severe pain while paralyzed. Public support for capital punishment has declined to just over half of Americans from 80 percent in 1994 as high-profile failures have mounted polling cited in those reports shows.[[3]](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/05/18/executions-firing-squads-federal-death-penalty)
South Carolina’s 2025 use of the firing squad included one case in which an autopsy revealed that only two of three bullets struck the prisoner and neither hit the heart as intended the Death Penalty Information Center reported. Idaho spent more than one million dollars preparing a new execution chamber with scoped rifles for the method which took effect this summer. The federal government added firing squad as an option in April alongside other older techniques such as electrocution and gas as lethal injection supplies dwindled. Historically the method accounted for just 0.4 percent of executions since 1976 with only six carried out in that period before the recent increase.[[4]](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/new-analysis-in-seeking-firing-squad-electrocution-and-nitrogen-gas-executions-doj-misrepresents-american-history-and-law)
The last US firing squad execution prior to 2025 took place in Utah in 2010 according to records maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center. Overall 29 executions had been completed nationwide through late September of this year with Florida accounting for a large share. For Hasan the Army must still finalize procedural details as the military has not conducted an execution of any kind since 1961. Victim families have awaited the outcome through years of appeals that ended with the Supreme Court’s denial of review in 2025.
