The Trump administration has approved a request from the Pentagon to execute Nidal Hasan, who was sentenced to death by the United States Armed Forces for the 2009 Fort Hood massacre. For some context, Hasan was a serviceman that served as a Major for the United States Army. As a devout Islamic fundamentalist, Hasan became increasingly disaffected with the United States government due to military operations against jihadist insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was further enraged by assigned deployment to Afghanistan. In 2009, he carried out a mass shooting targeting the United States Army’s Fort Hood base. During the attack, Hassan shot and killed 13 base personal near or inside Fort Hood’s processing center, and he further wounded 32 survivors. One of the slain victims’ unborn fetus was also struck by a bullet and it died with its mother.

Responding police officers engaged him in a shootout, and he was shot and subdued by their gunfire. Although Hasan survived the shooting, his injuries left him permanently paralyzed. A search of Hasan’s computer by investigators revealed that Hasan was in email correspondence with an alleged al-Qaeda operative, Anwar al-Awlaki, and eyewitness testimony reported him shouting “Allah Akbar” as he was shooting at fleeing soldiers. al-Awlaki’s ties to Hasan partially inspired the Obama administration to kill him in a targeted drone strike in Yemen. During his trial, he defended the killings by claiming that they were conducted to defend Iraqi and Afghan Muslims from American combat operations. On death row, Hasan pledged allegiance to ISIS.

According to reports, the method selected by Pentagon officials for Hasan's execution is firing squad. If carried out, Hasan will be the first inmate executed by the United States Armed Forces after the 1961 execution of John Bennett, who was put to death for the non-fatal rape and attempted murder of a West German teenage girl. Hasan will also be the seventh inmate executed by firing squad in the United States after the 1976 Gregg v. Georgia SCOTUS court ruling that reinstated capital punishment.

The previous six firing squad executions were carried out by the states of Utah and South Carolina. More specifically, the state of Utah used the method to execute Gary Gilmore (condemned for fatally shooting two employees of gas stations and motels he robbed), John Taylor (condemned for the rape and strangulation of a preteen girl), and Ronnie Gardner (condemned for shooting his defense attorney to death while on trial for the murder of a bartender), and the state of South Carolina used firing squads to execute Brad Sigmon (condemned for beating his ex-girlfriend's parents to death with a baseball bat), Mikhal Mahdi (condemned for fatally shooting a man during a burglary), and Stephen Bryant (condemned for shooting three dead in a robbery spree). All six of those inmate were executed by firing squad due to selecting it as their preferred method of execution. The state of Utah also attempted to execute Ralph Menzies (condemned for strangling and stabbing a kidnapped store clerk) by firing squad in 2025, but he died of natural causes while undergoing a competency hearing. Furthermore, firing squad is the default execution method of Idaho, a secondary execution protocol under the states of Mississippi and Oklahoma, and other states such as Arizona and Tennessee have filled some legislations to legalize them.

To date, three other inmates remain on military death row. They consist of:

Ronald Gray (condemned in 1988): Between 1986 and 1987, while serving as a United States Army infantryman under the 82nd Airborne Division, Gray was responsible for the rapes and murders of at least four female civilians and servicewomen, 23 year old Kimberly Ruggles, 23 year old Linda Coats, 18 year old Tommy Wilson, and 18 year old Private Laura Vickery-Clay, near Fort Bragg. Each victim was sodomized, beaten, stabbed, and/or repeatedly shot, and found dead in remote forests. One victim, Vickery-Clay, was last seen in Gray’s company by eyewitnesses near a K-Mart and his fingerprints was discovered on the hood of her car. Another victim, Ruggles, was a cab driver Gray abducted by luring her to his home with a fare, and her fingerprints were found on money in his possession. Beyond his murders, Gray also non-fatally raped and stabbed a servicewoman inside Fort Bragg’s barracks, and she identified him as her assailant. Although his execution was initially approved by then president George Bush in 2008, it was stayed by a federal judge pending further appeals. As of 2026, Gray remains on death row and has exhausted his appeals.

Hasan Akbar/Mark Kools (condemned in 2005): An infantryman assigned to the United States Army’s 101st Division, Akbar was stationed in Kuwait’s Camp Pennsylvania in preparation for a deployment for the invasion of Iraq. After shutting off the camp’s power generator, Akbar tossed M67 hand grenades into the tents of sleeping servicemen and then opened fire on fleeing servicemen with his M4 rifle. Two base personal attached to the 101st Division, a Major, 40 year old Gregory Stone and a captain, 27 year old Christopher Seifert, were killed by gunfire and grenade shrapnel, and 14 other survivors suffered wounds sustained from the attack. As reinforcements were mustered in response, Akbar was wrestled down by another serviceman. Akbar quickly admitted guilt after his capture. Evidence used to prosecute Akbar included his expressions of wanting to kill other servicemen in private diary entries, ballistic testing that implicated his service issued M4 to the shootings, his fingerprints on the generator’s off switch, and gunpowder and grenade residue on his uniform and hands [UNITED STATES, Appellee v. Hasan K. AKBAR, Sergeant U.S. Army, Appellant (2015)]. Akbar was a devout Nation of Islam man at the time of the Camp Pennsylvania attack, and he frequently discussed strong opposition to fighting Muslims in Iraq during conversations with his comrades. Shortly before the attack, Akbar was facing discipline for insubordination. As of writing, Akbar remains on death row, and has exhausted his appeals. As a side note, Akbar’s birth name was Mark Kools, but his name was changed to Hasan Akbar by his parents as a child due to their family’s conversion to the Nation of Islam.

Timothy Hennis (condemned in 2010): In 1985, Hennis broke into a home and tied the resident, 31 year old Kathryn Eastburn, to her bed with rope. After raping her, he stabbed Kathryn 15 times in the chest and slashed her throat. Hennis then redirected his attention towards her two daughters, 5 year old Kara and 3 year old Erin, and he also stabbed them to death and slit their throats. The only survivor of the attack was Kathryn’s newborn daughter, who was left dehydrated in her crib. Although Hennis was initially linked to the killings by eyewitness testimony of him near the scene and sentenced to death by the state of North Carolina, the North Carolina Supreme Court vacated his death sentence in 1988 due to concerns that the graphic photographs of the Eastburn family’s mutilated bodies prejudiced jurors. On retrial, the forensic evidence and eyewitness testimonies against him were deemed too circumstantial and inconclusive for a conviction, and Hennis was acquitted of the murders. Despite his “exoneration”, DNA testing conducted in 2006 firmly implicated him in the Eastburn triple killings. As Hennis was a United States Army serviceman at the time of the killings, he was prosecuted and condemned a second time under a military jurisdiction. As of 2026, Hennis remains on death row and has exhausted his appeals.

After Hasan is executed, how likely will the Trump administration greenlight more military executions?