The Pentagon announced last week that Nidal Hasan, who was sentenced to death in 2013 for the attack on a U.S. Army base in 2009, will be executed by firing squad in an unprecedented live-streamed operation on December 3.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who had pushed for the use of a firing squad, said the public execution was to make people “understand that there are serious consequences” for their actions. the move to make it public and broadcast it has drawn criticism from activists, lawmakers across party lines, other nations, and international organisations alike for its “barbaric” nature and symbolism linked to autocracy and anarchy While firing squads are legal for executions in the country.
President Donald Trump signed off on the execution earlier this month. He was shot by a police officer trying to restrain him and was left partially paralysed in a wheelchair. Considered one of the biggest non-war attacks on U.S. military infrastructure, reports have linked Hasan’s motives to mental health issues, Islamist Jihad, and opposition to the draft. He is charged with dozens of counts of premeditated murder and attempted murder, with the terrorism angle being dropped. After his possibilities of appeals in the military system were extinguished, U.S. Capital punishments are always contested in democratic systems, with conflicting perspectives on morality and justice making them subjective. Many countries, including the U.K., France, and Italy, have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, while several others have made it subject to stringent scrutiny. Under pressure from civil rights groups over discriminatory elements in death sentences in the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. This ruling made existing provisions for capital punishment in States unconstitutional and spared hundreds of prisoners on death row. Different States use different methods for execution, like gas chambers, electric chairs, lethal injections, and firing squads. The U.S. Currently, five U.S. States — Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah, and South Carolina — and the U.S. military allow execution by firing squad. Army has used firing squads for executions regularly in the 19th century, with hundreds of soldiers facing the guns during the Civil War. Hasan’s execution would be the first since the Second World War that the U.S. Army employed a firing squad to carry out a sentence.
Hasan, 56, is a former Major in the U.S. Army and a psychiatrist and is convicted of killing 12 soldiers and a civilian and injuring more than 30 after he opened fire with a handgun on troops waiting for deployment details at the Fort Hood base in Texas in 2009. He was court-martialed, convicted, and sentenced to death in 2013. However, States updated their statutes to comply with the ruling, and the Supreme Court upheld the updated provisions in 1976. In 1945, Army private Eddie Slovik was executed by firing squad for desertion. The last U.S. military execution of any kind took place in 1961, when private John Bennett was hanged after being convicted of rape and attempt to murder of a minor.
Legal experts have said that Hasan can still move against the capital punishment in civilian federal courts, which could take years to close. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the death penalty is unconstitutional when imposed in an “arbitrary and capricious manner”. Supreme Court made a unanimous decision in 1879 that execution by firing squad does not fall under “cruel and unusual punishments” prohibited by the Constitution.
A U.S. law prohibits recording or broadcasting of executions in federal prisons, but military cases do not fall under this provision. States regulate who witnesses executions, and they are mostly limited to authorised officials, lawyers, family members, and select media representatives. Sporadic attempts have been made to make executions pubic, but all of them were turned down by courts.
In 2001, a request to livestream the execution by lethal injection of Timothy McVeigh, convicted for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was denied by a court, but the procedure was shown to survivors of the attack and family members of the victims through CCTV.
