President Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of former Army physician Nidal Hasan, who was convicted by a military jury for the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting that killed 13 people and injured 32 others.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recommended the use of a firing squad for the execution of the man who self-identified as an Islamic jihadist. He carried out the attack on unarmed soldiers at Fort Hood under that explicit ideology, Pentagon officials said.
It was the deadliest terrorist attack on an American military base.
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“The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution,” Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Monday on social media. “Judgment day for Hasan has finally come.”
Hasan is currently held at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice requires that the president approve the execution of a member of the U.S. armed forces sentenced to death during a court-martial. That person must then be put to death within the next 60 to 150 days.
Hasan is one of four inmates on the U.S. military’s death row at Fort Leavenworth.
The others include former Army sergeant Hasan Akbar, who launched a “fragging” attack in 2003 against his own unit at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait. He threw hand grenades into tents and opened fire on his fellow soldiers. He killed two officers and wounded 14 others.
Ronald Gray, a former Army cook at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was convicted of killing two women in 1986 and 1987 - including a fellow soldier - and raping three others. He also pleaded guilty to at least two additional murders and five rapes in civilian courts.
Timothy Hennis, a former Army master sergeant, was convicted of the 1985 triple murder of a mother and her two young daughters in North Carolina. He was initially convicted in a civilian state court but acquitted during a retrial. Mr. Hennis then returned to active duty. He was court-martialed by the military in 2010 after new DNA evidence linked him to the crime scene.
Double jeopardy wasn’t an issue in the Hennis case because the military is a separate sovereign jurisdiction.
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