Acting Army Chief Says Execution Date Has Been Set

The acting secretary of the US Army said Tuesday that the man convicted of killing 13 people in the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, will be executed by firing squad on Dec. 3. In a post on social media, acting Secretary Adam Telle said the execution of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan will take place at Fort Hood. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Monday that President Trump had approved the execution of Hasan. The US military has not carried out the death penalty since 1961. Parnell said the plan to use a firing squad was suggested by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and approved by the president.

• Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, walked into a medical building where soldiers were getting medical checkups, shouted "Allahu akbar"— Arabic for "God is great!"—and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun. Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 injured. He said it was an effort to stop them from going to Afghanistan and killing his fellow Muslims. Hasan made almost no effort to defend himself at trial. He told jurors that evidence would show he was the shooter and described himself as a soldier who had "switched sides."
• Trump's approval triggered a series of procedural steps toward carrying out the execution, but Hasan could put them on hold—potentially for years—with a habeas corpus appeal in the civilian federal court system, according to an article published in May in the magazine Army Lawyer.
• In the last military execution, Pvt. John Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth on April 13, 1961 for the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl in Austria, CBS News reports. The last US military execution by firing squad happened during World War II. Pvt. Eddie Slovik was shot in France on Jan. 31, 1945 for desertion.