The Pentagon announced Monday that it will put a former Army major in front of a firing squad, the first time the US military has used that method since 1945. The announcement came via social media post from a Pentagon spokesperson, who wrote: "Judgement day for Hasan has finally come." Somewhere, a Defense Department comms staffer had a very specific kind of Monday.
The Announcement, Delivered Like a Product Launch
Here is what happened. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced on X that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had recommended death by firing squad for Nidal Hasan, and that President Donald Trump had approved it. According to the BBC, the Secretary of the Army will set the time and place. NBC News reports that Acting Army Secretary Adam R. Telle will be the one making that call.
The state putting a human being to death is, historically, a thing that gets announced with some solemnity. A grim statement. A pause. Instead we got a post on X with the phrase "judgement day" in it, like the trailer for a Terminator sequel nobody asked for.
Who Nidal Hasan Is, and What He Did
None of this is about whether Hasan did it. He did. Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist from Virginia, opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas on November 5, 2009. He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others, according to NBC News. The BBC notes it remains the deadliest non-combat attack ever on an American military base.
The attack happened in a crowded medical building where soldiers who were about to deploy were waiting for check-ups and vaccines. Unarmed people, in line for shots. Hasan acted as his own lawyer at trial and told the court he was the gunman. A panel of 13 officers convicted him of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder, and unanimously recommended death.
At his 2013 court-martial, the BBC reports, he said he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Prosecutors argued he was motivated by an unwillingness to deploy and a sense of duty to jihad. NBC adds a detail that rarely makes the press release: a Joint Terrorism Task Force determined he "was not involved in terrorist activities or terrorist planning," and authorities said he acted alone.
Why a Firing Squad, Specifically
The firing squad is not a casual pick. NBC News reports the last US service member executed by firing squad was Army Pvt. Eddie Slovik in 1945, for desertion during World War II. The last service member of any kind executed by the military was Army Pvt. John Bennett in 1961, and that was by hanging.
So this is a 65-year gap, and the method chosen is the one that looks the most like a movie. The BBC notes that firing squads are rare even in civilian life. South Carolina carried one out last year, the first in the US in 15 years, and four other states allow the method: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah. Choosing it here is a choice about theater as much as procedure. A lethal injection does not photograph well in a campaign cycle.
The Legal Road Still Has Some Distance Left
Do not pencil in a date yet. The BBC reports that a military execution requires presidential approval under military law, plus appellate review and a final judgment on legality before it can go forward. Presidential approval is in hand. The rest is the part that tends to take years.
The military death penalty itself has a strange history. The US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces deemed it unconstitutional in 1983, and it was reinstated the next year by an executive order under Ronald Reagan. Hasan is one of four inmates on the military's death row, per the BBC. It has been over a decade since his sentence, and the machinery moves slowly for a reason: when you kill people in the name of the government, you are supposed to be very sure about the paperwork.
The Death Penalty Is Back in Fashion in Washington
This fits a pattern. The BBC reports that Trump reinstated the federal death penalty through an executive order on the first day of his administration in January 2025, reversing the moratorium the Justice Department adopted under Joe Biden. That order calls capital punishment "an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens."
The BBC notes that 27 states, the military and the federal government still have capital punishment as a legal option. So the policy is not new or illegal. What is new is the posture. This administration likes the death penalty the way it likes most things: loudly, with a graphic, and with a spokesperson ready to type something that sounds like a movie poster.
The Dingo Take
Who is that post on X actually for? Not the 13 families who lost someone at Fort Hood. They did not need a catchphrase. They needed a sentence carried out with care and accuracy, and they have waited 17 years for it. The people who needed the catchphrase are the ones who like their justice with a soundtrack.
Look, Hasan murdered 13 people and wounded 32 more, and he said so in open court. Nobody serious is arguing that he is an innocent man or a sympathetic one. But the weight of a government killing someone is exactly why it should be handled with the dullest, most careful, most boring procedure imaginable. This is the opposite. It is a firing squad that has not been scheduled yet, announced through a social media post, from a department whose secretary now prefers the title "Secretary of War." The tone is the tell.
The appeals are still ahead, the legal review is still ahead, and a date does not exist. What exists right now is a headline, and a headline is what this announcement was built to be. If the Pentagon wants us to take the gravity of an execution seriously, it could start by announcing one the way a country that takes it seriously would.
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