Fort Hood shooter’s execution to be livestreamed: US

MULTIPLE ISSUES: The execution raises many legal and public policy questions, an expert said, expressing doubt that a second thought was put into the decision

The firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed, the Pentagon said on Thursday, a stunning revelation about plans for the first military execution in more than 65 years.

The US army announced this week that the execution would take place at Fort Hood on Dec. 3 after Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 in a shooting at the military base in 2009.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said.

Nidal Hasan, charged with killing 13 people and wounding 31 in a 2009 shooting spree at Fort Hood, is pictured in an undated photograph.

Photo: Reuters

Pentagon officials said the execution would be livestreamed and that more details would follow.

The revelation about the public nature of the execution — let alone one as violent as a firing squad — has raised further questions about how the death penalty is carried out in the US, especially after the botched lethal injection of Christa Pike in Tennessee.

Hasan could choose to resist execution and file a habeas petition — a legal request to review the legality of a detention — in civilian court, which could significantly delay the execution, experts said.

“It frankly might outlast the current administration, and who knows if the next one will have the same penchant for executions,” said Eugene Fidell, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School specializing in military law.

Deborah Denno, a death penalty expert and law professor at Fordham University, said livestreaming an execution could make the process “much more transparent” and inform the public about all that capital punishment entails.

Those are benefits that would be useful at a time when Pike’s botched execution has raised fresh questions about the manner by which criminal defendants are put to death for their crimes, she said.

As many states have had difficulty carrying out lethal injections due to difficulty accessing drugs or finding medical professionals willing to participate in executions, firing squads are being seen as a less inhumane alternative, said Brenner Fissell, a professor at Villanova Law and vice president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

“Firing squads can be a quicker, cleaner, more precise way to execute a prisoner,” he said. “I don’t think that’s what’s motivating this. There’s a perceived masculinity and military-ness to firing squads that is part of the aura Hegseth is trying to emphasize — the ‘lethality culture.’”

Elisabeth Semel, codirector of the Death Penalty Clinic at UC Berkeley Law, said Hegseth’s announcement raises a host of legal and public policy questions.

Although there has been long-running discussion about the idea of televising an execution, “I don’t recall a situation in which it was instigated by the government. I think that also raises serious questions about what is the motivation of the government,” she said.

Semel said she was skeptical that the administration of US President Donald Trump had given a second thought to the legal and social questions presented by the decision.

Hasan, an army psychiatrist who held the rank of major, walked into a medical building on Nov. 5, 2009, where soldiers were waiting in long lines to receive immunizations and medical clearance for deployment.

He shouted “Allahu akbar” — Arabic for “God is great!” — and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun. He also shot at the backs of fleeing soldiers.

It was an effort to stop them from going to Afghanistan and killing his fellow Muslims, Hasan said.

A military judge barred him from presenting that as a defense during his 2013 trial.

Hasan was left paralyzed from the waist down after being shot in the back by law enforcement.

He could seek a lengthy delay of his execution, but given his behavior at trial, he might not want to.

After firing his lawyers and representing himself, Hasan told jurors he was the gunman. He said little else over the next three weeks, which convinced his court-appointed standby lawyers that Hasan’s only goal was to get a death sentence.

The military called nearly 90 witnesses, but Hasan rested his case without calling a single person to testify in his defense and made no closing argument. Yet he leaked documents during the trial to journalists that revealed he told mental health workers he could “still be a martyr ” if executed.

Attorney John Galligan, a former military judge who had represented Hasan in several civil matters following his criminal trial, said that according to Hasan, the commandant of the facility brought a chaplain, but no attorney from either the Trial Defense Service or from his civilian defense when he was notified that Trump had signed off on his execution.

An army spokeswoman said they had adhered to policy and made multiple attempts to contact Trial Defense Service attorneys.

Hasan has not been kept from contacting and communicating with his counsel, she added.