Experts link Hasan's firing squad timing to Tennessee's Pike case

First U.S. military execution in over six decades

Death penalty experts NPR interviewed said they suspect the Pentagon’s decision to execute Nidal Hasan by firing squad could be connected to Tennessee’s botched lethal injection of Christa Pike — a case that has dominated headlines and reignited national debate over execution methods over the past week. President Trump approved the execution Monday night, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced on X, making it the first U.S. military execution in over six decades and the first by firing squad since World War II.

In his announcement, Parnell wrote, “Judgement day for Hasan has finally come.” He said Trump had acted on the recommendation of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said last September that he was “100 percent committed to ensuring the death penalty is carried out for Nidal Hasan.” “This savage terrorist deserves the harshest lawful punishment for his 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood,” Hegseth told several media outlets, including The Hill, at the time. “The victims and survivors deserve justice without delays.” Secretary of the Army Adam Telle said in an order released Tuesday that Hasan’s execution will take place at Fort Hood on Dec. 3. The White House referred NPR’s questions to the Pentagon, which declined to elaborate beyond Parnell’s post.

Hasan was working as an Army psychiatrist in November 2009 when he opened fire at the Fort Hood processing center where troops were preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. He shouted “Allahu akbar” — “God is great” — before killing 13 people and injuring another 32, according to NPR. The attack ended when he was shot by civilian security officers at the scene, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. During his 2013 trial, in which Hasan acted as his own lawyer, he told the court that “the evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter.” The American-born Muslim said he had “switched sides” and turned against the United States because of its military actions in the Middle East. The military jury found Hasan guilty on all counts; he was dismissed from the Army and sentenced to death. His sentence triggered an automatic appeals process that ended only when the Supreme Court denied his final petition in the spring of 2025.

Hasan is one of just four people currently on military death row — all of whom were convicted of murder — according to the Death Penalty Information Center. They are incarcerated at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The Dec. 3 date may not hold. “The fact that the president has approved Mr. Hasan’s death sentence is another step closer to his execution,” Robin Maher, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, said. “But that does not mean that his execution will be imminent.” Maher noted that Hasan could delay proceedings by filing a habeas corpus appeal in federal court, pointing to Ronald Gray, who committed multiple rapes and murders near Fort Bragg in the 1980s and remains on military death row despite having had his sentence approved by President George W. Bush in 2008.

The planned execution would mark a break from more than 60 years of military practice. The U.S. military last carried out an execution of any kind in 1961, when Private John Bennett was hanged for the 1955 rape and attempted murder of an Austrian girl, according to the center. The last military firing squad execution came earlier, in 1945, when Private Eddie Slovik was shot for desertion in France — the only U.S. soldier to be executed for that reason since the Civil War. “They didn’t even tell his wife that he had been executed; they just said that he had died in Europe,” journalist Charles Glass, who wrote a book about World War II deserters, told NPR in 2013. Glass said Slovik’s case became public knowledge only about a decade later. “We basically have gone out of the business — until now — of executing people through the military justice system,” Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School, said.

The military officially suspended the death penalty after a 1983 court ruling but reinstated it the following year, specifically designating lethal injection as the standard method, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Fidell said the choice of method became a matter for presidential discretion under Army regulations changed in 2023. “The regulation was changed to make the choice or the method of execution a matter for the president’s discretion,” he said. “And obviously, the president has, in this case, approved the use of a firing squad.” Under the current rules, once the president approves an execution, the secretary of the Army decides the time, location and method, to take place within 60 to 150 days. Fidell said he was not surprised by Trump’s approval, given the administration’s embrace of the death penalty and the severity of Hasan’s offenses. He suggested, however, that the social media announcement may have been inappropriate. “The military has lived without executions since 1961, and yet we have here a really serious case,” Fidell said. “I think it would have been a lot better had a more formal, dignified means been chosen to disseminate this information.” The Pentagon has not held a formal press briefing since May, NPR reported.

The timing, several death penalty experts told NPR, may not be coincidental. The Pentagon’s announcement comes amid intense scrutiny of lethal injection following Tennessee’s recent botched execution of Christa Pike. Deborah Denno, a Fordham Law School professor who has studied execution methods for 36 years, told NPR that Pike’s case “is probably the worst that’s ever happened,” though she said it is far from the only botched lethal injection in recent years, pointing to what she called a pattern of convicts being “tortured unnecessarily.” Corinna Lain, whose book Secrets of the Killing State was published last year, said states have spent years struggling with execution procedures. “For years now, states have been pushing this rock of Sisyphus uphill,” Lain said. “They’re spending millions of dollars, and yet they’re having botched executions. So this moment in time is one where states are really thinking about: what are we doing and what best serves the death penalty? Whether the answer to that is firing squad is another question entirely.”

Denno noted that shooting has a long history in American punishment. The first recorded execution by shooting on what would become U.S. soil took place in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608, when Capt. George Kendall was put to death for mutiny. “On the one hand, it is one of our earliest forms of execution,” Denno said. “On the other hand, it’s always been controversial because people associate it with extreme barbarity and… the Wild West.” Denno argued that, when performed correctly, firing squads can be more reliable than other methods. She called them “the least inhumane method of execution that we have,” since death can occur in seconds. But she acknowledged that the procedure has had problems of its own, pointing to a 2025 case in South Carolina in which an autopsy revealed that shooters may have prolonged a prisoner’s death by missing his heart. Lain added: “There is a humane way to take a life. It’s called life without parole.”

Lain said lethal injections, because of their relative lack of gore, have kept the death penalty “out of sight, out of mind” for many people over the last five decades. But she sees signs of change. Data analysis by the Death Penalty Information Center shows that death sentences have declined by 90% over the past three decades, with fewer than 50 new ones imposed each year since 2015. A 2025 Gallup poll put public support for the death penalty at a five-decade low, with opposition highest among younger generations.

The Justice Department made firing squads available for federal executions earlier this year, following a directive from Trump. Seven states now have firing squads on the books as an execution method — the highest number ever recorded, according to Denno. Lain said she sees those trends and the Hasan execution as part of the same arc. “The death penalty in this country is dying its own slow death,” she said. She thinks the federal government’s embrace of the firing squad, including in Hasan’s case, could hasten it even more.