President Donald Trump has approved a firing squad execution for former Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the convicted gunman behind the 2009 Fort Hood massacre that killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others.
Hasan was sentenced to death after being convicted of carrying out the attack at the Texas military installation. His execution would mark a rare and historic moment for the U.S. military, which has not carried out an execution in decades.
The decision comes days after a botched lethal-injection attempt in Tennessee involving convicted murderer Christa Pike. Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital before being taken to a hospital, prompting Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to halt the state’s remaining executions for the year and order an outside review.
Now, Hasan’s case is putting a very different execution method back in the spotlight.
The U.S. military has not executed anyone since 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth. A military firing squad execution is even more distant in American history.
The last U.S. military firing-squad execution was Army Pvt. Eddie Slovik, who was shot in France in 1945 after being convicted of desertion during World War II.
Hasan admitted during his trial that he was the gunman in the Fort Hood attack. He argued, however, that he carried out the shooting to stop U.S. soldiers from harming Muslims overseas.
The 2009 attack targeted soldiers at the Fort Hood military installation and became one of the deadliest attacks on a U.S. military base.
Trump’s approval now sets the stage for an execution method the U.S. military has not used since World War II, while questions continue surrounding the reliability of lethal injection following Tennessee’s failed attempt involving Pike.
For Hasan, the next chapter of the case could therefore be written not only in the military’s death-penalty history, but also in one of its oldest execution methods.
