Trump just ordered the first military execution by firing squad since 1945 – here’s why

Donald Trump has ordered the death by US army firing squad for convicted murderer Nidal Hasan, the first of its kind since 1945. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote on social media on Tuesday night that “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, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009″. “The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution. Judgement day for Hasan has finally come.” Shorts Hegseth retweeted the announcement with the one-word comment “Justice”. There have only been a handful of firing squad executions in the US since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Death penalties from courts-martial are even more rare, and with no military execution at all since 1961, and none by firing squad since 1945. It comes amid renewed controversy over the US death penalty after the botched execution by lethal injection of Christa Pike. Terror at Fort Hood In November 2009, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, shredded his birth certificate, drove to Fort Hood army base wearing his fatigues and name tag, shouted “Allahu akbar” and opened fire with his laser-sighted handgun, leaving 13 dead and 32 wounded in one of the deadliest mass shootings at an American military base. At a court-martial trial in 2013 he faced murder charges rather than terror charges, despite the fact he admitted being motivated by a jihad to kill soldiers and protect “my Muslim brothers” in Afghanistan. A US Senate report later called it the worst act of terrorism on American soil since 9/11. Hasan later said he wished he had died in the attack and become a martyr. He told an army medical panel “if I died by lethal injection I would still be a martyr”. Nevertheless, the jury unanimously sentenced him to death by lethal injection. His legal avenues of appeal were exhausted last year when the Supreme Court rejected his petition. A military death sentence must be personally approved by the president – approval that is rarely given. The military has not executed a service member since 1961, when Pvt. John Bennett was hanged after being convicted of the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl in Austria. Most death sentences are eventually commuted to life imprisonment. The most recent US military execution by firing squad appears to be that of Dan Lee, a soldier convicted of murder and rape in the Philippines and executed on November 9, 1945. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth asked President Trump to approve the execution (Photo: Alex Wong/Pool Photo via AP) In June it emerged that the army was preparing to carry out the executions of the military’s four death-row inmates, including Hasan, anticipating Trump’s approval. The plan, dubbed “Operation Resolute Justice”, would reportedly see the condemned prisoners transferred for execution to Indiana. There has not been a contemporary military firing squad execution, so the precise method is unclear. However there have been a handful of state-based executions. In South Carolina the prisoner is strapped to a metal chair on top of a “catch basin”, as three anonymous people fire rifles from about 15 feet away, through a hole in a wall. All have live ammunition and aim for the heart. In 2017 US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, part of the court’s liberal wing, wrote a now-famous dissent arguing for firing squads instead of lethal injections after death penalties. She said lethal injections amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment”, forbidden by the US Constitution, saying evidence of “horrifying deaths” showed “the method that appears most humane may turn out to be our most cruel experiment yet”. Instead, she said “the available evidence suggests that a competently performed shooting may cause nearly instant death [and] may also be comparatively painless”. However Austin Sarat, a legal professor at Amherst College who specialises in the death penalty, said the death of Brad Sigmon in South Carolina last year, which was the first firing squad execution in the US in nearly 15 years, was “part of a morbid search for ‘better’ execution methods amid concern over botched lethal injection attempts and a scarcity of the drugs needed to carry out such executions”. Every execution method “has, at one time or other, been touted as humane only to be sidelined because its use was found to be gruesome and offensive”, he wrote for The Conversation. “The history of the firing squad is marked by gruesome mistakes when marksmen missed their target,” he said. “In the 1951 execution of Eliseo Mares, for example, four executioners all shot into the wrong side of his chest, and he died slowly from blood loss.” In 1877, Wallace Wilkerson was sentenced to death by firing squad after shooting a man to death during a heated game of cribbage. According to AP he was intoxicated and smoking a cigar, and moved slightly just before the firing squad shot. He slumped to the ground saying “My God, they’ve missed it!” and took 15 minutes to die. Legal lifeline Despite the presidential order, Hasan’s execution could still be prevented or delayed by legal action. Ronald Gray, an American serial killer and rapist who worked as an army cook at Fort Bragg, is the military’s longest-serving death row inmate. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection by a military court in 1988. In 2008 then-president George W Bush approved Gray’s execution, however a federal judge granted a stay of execution to allow further appeals, the latest of which was rejected in 2018 when the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Legal experts wrote earlier this year that, for Hasan, the presidential order may “seek habeas corpus through the Federal court system” challenging the legality of his imprisonment, and allowing him to attack his conviction based on alleged violations of their constitutional rights. “This change in status to condemned prisoner may just be the beginning,” they wrote. Death penalty backlash The death penalty in the US is he subject of renewed controversy after Christa Pike, the first woman facing execution in Tennessee for two centuries, did not die after two doses of pentobarbital, and instead survives unconscious on a ventilator in hospital. Polls show almost half of Americans oppose the death penalty and it is outlawed in 23 states. However last year 47 executions were successfully conducted, the highest annual total since 2009. So far this year 29 prisoners have been executed in six states. Trump resumed the federal death penalty after an informal moratorium during previous administrations. The federal government executed 13 people between 2020 and early 2021, AP reported, contributing to making Trump the most prolific execution president in over 130 years.