A presidential decision has authorised the execution of Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who was convicted for the 2009 attack at Fort Hood in Texas that left 13 people dead and 32 others injured. The decision moves one of the most consequential military death-penalty proceedings in recent decades closer to a possible execution — an event that, were it to occur, would represent the first time the U.S. armed forces had carried out a death sentence since 1961.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth put forward a firing-squad execution as the method of carrying out the death sentence against Hasan, a course of action that received approval from President Donald Trump, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell disclosed. Parnell added that the Army Secretary would be responsible for determining when and where the execution takes place. No public disclosure of the date and location had come from the Army as of 6 October.
While Trump had taken the steps required to advance the death-sentence process — including authorising the firing squad as the method of execution — no date for carrying out the sentence against Hasan had been publicly set. Under military law, a condemned inmate retains the right to seek habeas corpus review through civilian federal courts even after a presidential death-sentence confirmation has been issued.
On 5 November 2009, a shooting took place at Fort Hood's Soldier Readiness Processing Center, carried out by Hasan, who held an Army psychiatrist post at the time. At the facility, a range of medical and administrative steps were under way for troops, among them those preparing to deploy. Shots fired from a semiautomatic handgun claimed the lives of 13 people — among them twelve soldiers and one civilian — while leaving 32 others requiring medical treatment.
A gunshot wound sustained during the response left Hasan alive but permanently without movement or sensation below the waist. Among attacks recorded against military bases on American soil, this one ranked as one of the most lethal in documented history.
Separate inquiries were opened by the FBI and the Army in the wake of the attack. Prior to the events in question, Hasan had drawn the attention of an FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force through communications that investigators had reviewed while pursuing a separate, unrelated matter. A November 2009 statement from the bureau noted that agents had examined particular exchanges involving Hasan prior to the attack, yet determined at that point that the material appeared consistent with research tied to his psychiatric duties at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
An independent review conducted after the fact — placed under the direction of former FBI Director William Webster — examined how the FBI had handled counterterrorism intelligence tied to Hasan. Eighteen recommendations came out of the Webster Commission's review, which also catalogued gaps across policy guidance, technology, information-review procedures, and staff training. No finding of deliberate neglect on the part of FBI staff was reached by the commission.
A general court-martial convened at Fort Hood to hear the case against Hasan. One notable aspect of the trial was Hasan's choice to act as his own attorney, though military defence counsel stood by throughout in an advisory capacity. No challenge to the account of his role in the shooting was put forward by him during the proceedings.
Verdicts on all 45 charges — 13 involving premeditated killings and 32 involving attempted premeditated killings — came back without a single dissenting vote from the court-martial panel against Hasan. A death sentence was handed down by the panel on 28 August 2013. Stripped of all pay and allowances, the sentence also carried a formal discharge from military service.
A death sentence handed down by a court-martial carries no automatic path to execution — further review steps are completed before any such penalty takes effect. Cases brought under military law face a layered appellate process that mandates review at multiple levels before any verdict becomes final. Over the span of more than ten years following the attack, Hasan's proceedings wound through the military appellate process without resolution.
That dispute eventually reached the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, a body positioned at the uppermost tier of the military justice system, after moving through successive rounds of appellate review. A range of questions stemming from his court-martial proceedings and capital sentence came before the tribunal in United States v. Hasan, No. 21-0193. After the court handed down its ruling on 4 March 2024, Hasan turned to the U.S. Supreme Court to seek further review of the matter.
Court filings at the Supreme Court level list the matter under the name Nidal M. Hasan v. United States, assigned docket number 24-5225. On 1 August 2024, Hasan lodged a petition seeking a writ of certiorari with the court. The government's opposition filing arrived in February 2025, with Hasan's reply brief following a month later. The petition was denied on the final day of March 2025.
By closing off the conventional route for Hasan to bring his case before the Supreme Court via direct appeal, the decision left intact at least one alternative pathway — collateral challenges pursued through civilian federal courts. According to a review published by Army Lawyer in May 2026, Hegseth put forward a request to Trump in September 2025 for a signed death warrant authorising and directing the execution of Hasan.
Any death sentence handed down by a military tribunal requires the sitting president to sign off before it can be carried out, as stipulated by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Under federal statute, a death sentence handed down by court-martial cannot be carried out without presidential approval, and that same office holds the power to reduce or cancel the punishment entirely. Responsibility for the next procedural steps — among them fixing a date and location for the execution — falls to the Army secretary.
A presidential sign-off on an execution order does not, on its own, guarantee that the process moves forward without delay. Legal scholarship from Army sources, released in the early months of 2026, took up Hasan's case as a focal point and concluded that a president's approval of a military death sentence leaves intact certain avenues for judicial oversight. Petitions for habeas corpus through civilian federal courts retain their legal standing as an available avenue.
A capital punishment order for Army Pvt. Ronald Gray was formally signed by President George W. Bush in July 2008, and Army authorities placed a date of 10 December 2008 on Gray's execution calendar. A federal lawsuit brought by Gray landed before the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas. A federal court order issued in November 2008 halted his execution so that habeas corpus proceedings could go forward, and Gray has remained on military death row since that time.
A review appearing in the May 2026 edition of Army Lawyer places Hasan within a group of four people currently held on the military's death row. Three other individuals — Ronald Gray, Hasan Akbar, and Timothy Hennis — remain on death row. No execution has been carried out by the U.S. military since Army Pvt. John A. Bennett was put to death by hanging at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas on 13 April 1961, following his convictions for rape and attempted murder.
Reports indicated that the Army's planned use of a firing squad for an upcoming execution would mark the first time that method had been carried out since the close of World War II. Pvt. Eddie Slovik holds the record as the most recent U.S. Army soldier put to death by a military firing squad. A firing squad carried out Slovik's death sentence on 31 January 1945, near the end of the war in Europe, following a military tribunal's finding that he had abandoned his post.
At the time of the 2009 attack carried out by Hasan, the post bore the name Fort Hood. A congressional mandate to strip Confederate-linked names from military installations led to the post being rechristened Fort Cavazos in May 2023, honouring the legacy of Gen. Richard E. Cavazos. A renaming decision put into effect in 2025 restored the installation's earlier designation — Fort Hood — attaching it this time to Col. Robert Benjamin Hood, whose World War I service earned him the Distinguished Service Cross. A military ceremony at the installation on 28 July 2025 put the renaming into effect.
By early October 2026, no execution date had been made public, and pathways through the civilian federal court system remained open to Hasan. Should the execution go forward, it would represent the first time in 65 years that a death sentence had been carried out by the United States military, and the first time the Army had used a firing squad for that purpose since the Second World War.
