Trump Approves Military Firing Squad Execution

The Pentagon emblem between two flags. — Photo: Shutterstock

President Trump has approved a firing squad to execute the soldier who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, the Pentagon says, marking the first U.S. military execution in more than six decades.

Quick Take

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell says President Trump approved death by firing squad for Nidal Hasan, acting on a recommendation from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
Hasan was convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, which killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others.
Reports say this would be the first U.S. military execution in over 60 years and the first American military firing-squad execution since 1945.
The announcement follows Idaho’s switch to firing squads as its main execution method after lethal injections became harder to carry out.
No full Pentagon order or legal memo has been made public yet, though the approval has been confirmed by multiple news outlets citing the same Pentagon statement.

Pentagon Confirms Trump Approved the Execution Method

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Secretary of War Pete Hegseth “has recommended — and President Donald J. Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan.” That statement, issued around October 5, became the basis for reports from multiple outlets confirming the approval came from the top of the chain of command.

Hasan, a former Army major, was convicted for opening fire at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 more in one of the deadliest attacks ever carried out on a U.S. military base. A military jury sentenced him to death, but his case sat unresolved for years as the execution method remained in question.

A Method Not Used by the Military in Generations

Multiple reports describe this as the first U.S. military execution in more than 60 years. The last time the Army carried out a firing-squad execution on one of its own was in January 1945, when Private Eddie Slovik was shot for desertion during World War II. No American service member has faced the firing squad since.

That history makes the Hasan case unusual even among military executions, which are themselves extremely rare. The military’s last execution of any kind took place in 1961, when a soldier was hanged for the attempted rape and murder of a child, according to Pentagon-adjacent reporting on the case.

Idaho’s Policy Shift Adds Context

The announcement comes months after Idaho made the firing squad its primary execution method starting July 1, after years of trouble carrying out lethal injections. Idaho was one of just five states — along with Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah — that allow firing squads under certain conditions, and its move helped push the method back into the national conversation.

Death penalty researchers note firing squads remain one of the least-used methods in American history. One analysis found just 141 shooting executions out of nearly 14,500 total executions recorded between 1608 and 1976, and only six firing-squad executions out of 1,664 total since 1976. That makes the method historically uncommon, even as several states have recently turned to it when other methods failed or became legally contested.

The Pentagon’s statement, delivered through spokesman Sean Parnell, remains the central public record of the decision so far. News organizations including the New York Post, Washington Examiner, CBS News, and others have independently repeated the same attribution, giving the core fact — that Trump approved the method on Hegseth’s recommendation — solid footing across multiple outlets.

What Remains Unclear

The Pentagon has not released a full written order, legal memo, or execution date tied to the decision. Questions about the exact scheduling, the number of shooters involved, and the legal review behind the choice of method have not been addressed in public statements so far.

What is firmly established is the headline fact itself: the nation’s top civilian and military leadership approved a historic and rarely used execution method for a man convicted of one of the worst mass shootings on a U.S. military installation. The case now moves toward becoming the first American military execution carried out in generations.