Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s announcement last week that the Pentagon would livestream the military execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, a former Army major and psychiatrist convicted by court-martial of murdering 12 of his fellow soldiers, plus a civilian, and wounding 32 at Ft. Hood, Texas, in 2009, has been met by intense controversy and surprise.
Hasan’s automatic military appeals process had recently affirmed his conviction and sentence, with the required final approval signed by President Donald Trump. Army regulations thus required the Army to set a date for execution.
Hegseth’s comments on the decision felt a lot like an opportunity to distract from the highly unpopular Iran war.
Hegseth’s comments on the decision felt a lot like an opportunity to distract from the highly unpopular Iran war by announcing his plans (on the recently returned USS Abraham Lincoln, no less — the same aircraft carrier plagued with issues during its deployment) to turn Hasan’s death into a public blood sport. A few days after his announcement, the Pentagon quietly increased the number of U.S. service members killed in the Iran war from 18 to 21 service members.
The last public execution in America was in the 1930s — a public hanging of a 22-year-old Black man in Kentucky in front of a crowd of tens of thousands of mostly white spectators. Public mores have changed greatly in the almost 100 years since that macabre spectacle. The public aspect of an execution is considered cruel and degrading, and hence prohibited, by numerous international human rights treaties the United States is party to; it would seemingly also violate the similar prohibition of the 8th Amendment.
While the Army used to hold executions of soldiers for desertion in front of large troop formations, in order to send a disciplinary message regarding desertion, that hasn’t occurred since the Civil War. The last military execution by firing squad, which happened to be for desertion in World War II, was conducted privately. The Pentagon’s own law of war manual prohibits the dissemination of humiliating propaganda, and its social media policy provides that “[n]o content will be released that could be reasonably construed as offensive, inappropriate, or unbecoming.”
Most importantly, the U.S. military educates its forces to not romanticize violence; it trains its service members on the disciplined and precise application of lethal force, with cruelty and wanton violence prohibited by both the law of war and U.S. law. As part of professionalism, the armed forces treats the death and destruction service members are ordered to inflict in war as awful but lawful, necessary incidents of war, as long as committed per the law of war.
Finally, formal Army values along with the values of all the services emphasize respect, integrity and honor. It’s near impossible to reconcile livestreaming an execution with honor. Glorifying violence, as Hegseth likes to do with his many social media posts of murderous U.S. military boat strikes in the Caribbean and with his proposal to livestream Hasan’s execution, is corrosive, it’s easy to see that such livestreaming will likely cause further moral injury to those in uniform while chipping away at the professionalism that is the bedrock of the U.S. military.
It’s easy to see that such livestreaming will likely cause further moral injury to those in uniform while chipping away at the professionalism that is the bedrock of the U.S. military.
It’s important to note that while the livestreaming of Hasan’s execution is a shocking proposal given its cruelty, the fact that Hasan received the death penalty in a military prosecution is not. The punishment was meted out in a 2013 court-martial through a unanimous decision by the same 13 military officers who found him guilty of 45 total premeditated murder plus attempted premeditated murder charges. There are currently three other convicted service members on military death row, so while quite rare, the military death penalty is not out of the ordinary.
If the Trump administration goes through with the Pentagon’s plans to live broadcast Hasan’s execution, it would put the U.S. in company with the few rogue countries, such as Iran and Afghanistan, that persist in the practice. It would also place the U.S., according to the former commanding general of the base that Hasan terrorized in 2003, on the same immoral plane as terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda, what with their history of recording and posting their barbaric murders on social media. There’s also concern that a public execution would give America’s enemies recruiting material, nevermind giving Hasan himself a huge public platform.
Those 13 military officers who sentenced Hasan to death had already unanimously convicted him (military law during his prosecution required “at least 12” jurors of equal or higher rank for a court-martial with capital charges, thus allowing the military jury to be greater than 12). Hasan, who represented himself, admitted to being the shooter during his court-martial; unlike federal criminal law, military law does not permit guilty pleas in capital cases — hence Hasan essentially made the trial itself a guilty plea.
Therefore, while Hasan’s death sentence was fairly adjudicated according to military law, the public nature of carrying out that sentence was never part of that process, nor should it be now.
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