Hegseth: Military Will Publicly Execute Fort Hood Shooter

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared Thursday that the military will carry out a public execution for the first time in more than a half century in a firing squad by troops at the base where the crimes occurred.

Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, is scheduled to die on Dec. 3. The White House has called his crimes an act of terrorism. The Pentagon said it would be livestreamed.

The U.S. has not held a public execution in nearly 100 years, and the government's online broadcast would prove unprecedented.

"He's going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be,” Hegseth said in an interview with Real America’s Voice. “And we'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand that there are serious consequences for these types of things.”

The last military execution was carried out in 1961, when Army Private John Bennett was hanged for rape and attempted murder. But that sentence — and other American military executions before it — were held in front of a small audience of witnesses, and not broadcast widely.

Hegseth said the military executions comparable to plans for Hasan’s death haven’t been held since World War II “but I kind of like the mentality we had in WWII — which was win, understand that when the enemy attacks you, you stand your ground.”

Asked if Hasan had made any appeals to President Donald Trump to spare his life, Hegseth said he did not care. “We'll see him on Dec. 3,” he said.

Hasan, who was an Army Medical Corps psychiatrist at the time of the shootings, was court-martialed in August 2013, convicted and sentenced to death.

The defense secretary said that the execution will be carried out at 1 p.m., “which is when he did it.”

The announcement comes just days after the botched execution of Christa Pike, a Tennessee prisoner who was convicted of torturing and killing a classmate in 1996. She survived two rounds of lethal injections on Sept. 30, suffering burns and blisters.

Pentagon officials did not respond to requests for comment.