Vance unsure if Pentagon will livestream prisoner's execution but says he won't be watching
U.S. Vice President JD Vance said on Friday he does not know whether the Pentagon will carry out its plan to livestream the execution by firing squad of the former U.S. Army psychiatrist convicted in the deadly 2009 Fort Hood shooting, a plan that has drawn broad condemnation.
Trump has not said whether he thinks execution should be shown on a livestream
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U.S. Vice-President JD Vance said Friday he does not know whether the Pentagon will carry out its plan to livestream the firing-squad execution of the former U.S. Army psychiatrist convicted in the deadly 2009 Fort Hood shooting, a proposal that has drawn broad condemnation.
As the controversy over the plan championed by U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth grew, former U.S. officials warned that livestreaming the execution would hand terrorists a recruiting tool, while a top U.S. Catholic bishop called the plan "barbaric."
"I don't know that that's actually going to happen," Vance told reporters in Cincinnati, referring to the livestream.
Vance added that if the Dec. 3 execution is livestreamed, "I'm not going to be watching it."
WATCH | Pentagon plan to livestream an execution:
Firing squad execution to be livestreamed, Pentagon says
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Former U.S. Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan is set to be executed by firing squad on Dec. 3, the first military execution in the U.S. in more than 65 years. Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a planned attack at the Fort Hood military base in 2009. The Pentagon says the execution will be livestreamed.Vance's comments raise questions about support within U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to the Pentagon's plan to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, who was found guilty in a U.S. military trial of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas.
Trump said at a White House event Friday that Hasan deserves the death penalty by firing squad, calling him "a maniac." The Republican president has not said whether he thinks the execution should be livestreamed.
Death penalty experts said it would mark the first known broadcast or livestream of a lawful execution.
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Hegseth, a Trump appointee, said Thursday that the public nature of the execution would demonstrate "there's serious consequences for these types of things."
Hegseth reposted a comment Trump made in 2013, possibly about the Boston Marathon bombers, saying: "Should be public execution for all to see — you will end this bullshit fast!"
The Pentagon on Friday declined to say whether families of those killed in Hasan's attack would be invited to attend the execution, as is common practice in civilian executions. It also remains unclear how the Army would select the shooters and what protocols would be followed. The Pentagon said it would release details later.
'Barbaric promotion of a culture of death'
A top U.S. Catholic official condemned the plan.
"This decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered," said Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump during an event in Sparrows Point, Maryland, earlier this month. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
The Catholic Church opposes capital punishment. Vance, a convert to Catholicism, has written a book about his faith.
Hegseth, a member of a conservative evangelical denomination, has invoked Christian language when discussing the Iran war and has led prayer services at the Pentagon. Hegseth also brushed off Pope Leo's criticism of the war.
Hasan is set to become the first person executed by firing squad by the U.S. military since 1945. Hasan, an American-born Muslim, said during his 2013 trial that he carried out the shootings to try to stop what he called a U.S. war on Islam.
"Whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don't forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people," Vance told reporters.
Gift to 'terrorist recruiters': senator
Joe Kent, who resigned this year as Trump's head of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, said the effort to deter extremism by livestreaming the execution could backfire.
"Streaming his execution is not just a stain on our morality — it also gives the terrorists free propaganda that they will use to radicalize & recruit more terrorists," Kent wrote on social media.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis wrote on social media that Hasan should be put to death, but that livestreaming his execution would be "beyond disgusting" and something that "oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do."
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Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Army officer, said such a livestream would give Hasan more attention.
"This is a gift to anti-American terrorist recruiters. It is absolutely shameful and damaging to America's interests and core values," Reed said in a statement.
The UN human rights office condemned the decision.
"Public executions constitute a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," Shabia Mantoo, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a news briefing in Geneva.
Mantoo added that it would "breach the absolute prohibition of torture."
Heightened debate over death penalty
The decision to livestream the execution comes amid heightened debate in the United States over the death penalty following the botched lethal injection last week of a Tennessee woman who was sentenced to death for a 1995 murder.
The controversy has also flared in the run-up to the Nov. 3 U.S. midterm elections, with polls indicating Trump's party could lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives and possibly the U.S. Senate to the Democrats.
The execution is scheduled to take place at the same sprawling military base where Hasan opened fire with a handgun in a medical facility. A military jury sentenced him to death after finding him guilty of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder.
The shooting came weeks before Hasan, now 56, was scheduled to deploy with U.S. forces to Afghanistan. Hasan was left partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair from being shot by police during his arrest.
The group Death Penalty Action, which opposes capital punishment, said Hasan's execution would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961, which was carried out by hanging.
The last known executions by U.S. military firing squads took place in 1945, the Death Penalty Information Center said.
At least five states have firing squads on the books, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In 2025, South Carolina carried out the first such execution in the United States in 15 years.
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