It continues to be amazing how easily American norms can be shattered. All it took was for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to advocate live streaming the upcoming death-by-firing-squad execution of the Army officer convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting and the Pentagon announced it, then Donald Trump said Me, too. Suggest it and who cares if it’s at odds the vast majority of countries’ policies about executions….it shall be done.
Pentagon officials said on Thursday that the Army officer convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting would be executed in public, a practice that ended in the United States nearly a century ago and is most commonly carried out in a handful of countries, including Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan.
The Pentagon said in a statement that the military execution, scheduled for Dec. 3, would also be broadcast via livestream. Such a broadcast has little precedent, and releasing video of executions is most often associated with extremist militant groups like the Islamic State.
The announcement adds to the growing spectacle around the planned execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others when he brought a personal handgun onto the grounds of Fort Hood, Texas. The rampage was the deadliest shooting at an American military base and sent shock waves through the U.S. military.
There are few countries that hold public executions. The human rights group Amnesty International has highlighted some cases in which public executions in Iran and Saudi Arabia have been filmed by bystanders.
The practice of filming and releasing video of an execution is more common with terror groups like the Islamic State, which became infamous for videos of gruesome executions of prisoners who were not given due process or convicted of crimes. Mass shooters have in some cases broadcast their killing sprees on livestream sites.
In an interview with Real America’s Voice, a conservative outlet, aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Thursday that the execution would be public and available to watch “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” The Pentagon later confirmed in a statement that the execution would be livestreamed.
The Army has said the public execution of Major Hasan will be conducted by firing squad at Fort Hood, the site of the shooting. If carried out, it would be a first in modern American history.
The last state-sanctioned public execution in the United States occurred more than 90 years ago in Owensboro, Kentucky. Some 20,000 people gathered to witness the August 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea, a young Black man who had been convicted of raping an elderly white woman.
Major Hasan’s execution would be the first by the military justice system since 1961, and he would be the first soldier put to death by firing squad since World War II. The firing squad is a rare method of execution, but one that has been used by the military, particularly during wartime. The Trump administration has proposed expanding its use as a method of execution.
The reaction of many leaders worldwide? The Guardian:
The United Nations’ office of the high commissioner for human rights warned on Friday that broadcasting the killing would amount to a public execution and “breach the absolute prohibition of torture”.
The plan also drew opprobrium from politicians, religious leaders and human rights advocates in the US and abroad. Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state, wrote on social media: “A barbaric idea, beneath our dignity as a country. Push back on this.”
Yassamin Ansari, the first Iranian American Democrat elected to the US Congress, posted: “In Trump’s America, we’re doing public executions now. WTF. This is what happens under brutal dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan. It’s all part of Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the United States.”
Britain, which abolished the death penalty in the 1960s, moved to distance itself from the execution. Bridget Phillipson, the UK’s equalities minister and Labour party chair, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that she found the concept “rather disturbing”.
Phillipson stressed that the decision was a matter for the US government, adding: “They are a close ally. Does that mean that we support everything the US government does? No.”
Under US military law, a president must approve an execution by firing squad. Trump did so on the recommendation of his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, according to the Pentagon.
Hegseth gleefully confirmed the livestream plan after previously saying that the execution would be public. Speaking to the conservative broadcaster Real America’s Voice, he said people should be able to watch because they need to understand that there were “serious consequences” for such crimes.
Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests, Hegseth replied: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3.”
And:
….Media have sought to televise US executions ?in the past, but have been blocked by the courts. No other country is known to televise or livestream legal executions, experts said.
Indeed, public executions have largely disappeared around the world. Amnesty International recorded at least 17 in 2025, including 11 in Iran and six in Taliban-run Afghanistan.
In the US, executions have been conducted privately for about nine decades. The hanging of Rainey Bethea in Kentucky in 1936, witnessed by thousands, is generally regarded as the country’s last public execution, although another hanging took place in Missouri the following year.
Experts said there was no known precedent for livestreaming a legal execution….The proposed live stream has prompted criticism from religious leaders. Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said it was a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered”.
Politicians from both sides of the aisle also spoke out. …Others warned that the spectacle would be counterproductive and act as a recruiting sergeant for US enemies seeking fresh propaganda.
Ned Price, a former deputy to the US representative to the United Nations, posted on X: “You can take it from those of us who’ve spent years working on terrorism: the surest way to spawn more radicalized zealots is to glorify violence, embrace a cult of death, and create a martyr for the cause.
“Or take it from [al-Qaida] and ISIS, whose tactics offer the closest modern-day approximation of Hegseth’s proposal. Either way, it’s hard to conjure a more vivid example of his trademark performative bravado, which routinely damages America’s image and, in this case, so ghoulishly leaves us more vulnerable.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, writes a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.