Nearly 17 years after he murdered 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan now has an execution date.
The Army will carry out Hasan’s death sentence by firing squad at Fort Hood on December 3, 2026, according to a memo from acting Army Secretary Adam Telle reported by the Washington Examiner and ABC News. It will be the first execution of a U.S. service member since 1961.
The execution of Nidal Hasan by firing squad will take place at Fort Hood, Texas on Thursday, December 3rd, 2026, at 1 p.m. CT. https://t.co/re7BpqkSN4
— Acting Secretary of the Army (@SecArmy) October 7, 2026
How we got here
The Pentagon announced Monday that President Trump had approved the execution. “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recommended the execution, and it was approved by President Donald Trump,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, according to ABC News. Parnell put it more bluntly to Fox News: “Judgment day for Hasan has finally come.”
On Tuesday, Telle set the date and time. The Washington Examiner reported the sentence will be carried out at 2 p.m. Eastern; ABC News listed it as 1 p.m. Central, the same moment.
Army policy requires an execution to take place no sooner than 60 days and no later than 150 days after the president approves it, ABC News reported. At least two media outlets will be chosen to witness it.
Hegseth had pushed for this for more than a year. In September 2025, he told the Daily Caller News Foundation: “I am 100 percent committed to ensuring the death penalty is carried out for Nidal Hasan. This savage terrorist deserves the harshest lawful punishment for his 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood.”
The attack
On November 5, 2009, Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, opened fire inside the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, where soldiers were getting medical checkups. He killed 12 soldiers and one civilian and wounded 32 others before he was shot and taken into custody, according to ABC News.
The Associated Press reported that Hasan shouted “Allahu akbar” as he began firing. He later said the attack was meant to stop soldiers from deploying to Afghanistan and described himself as a soldier who had “switched sides,” the AP reported. President Obama had the shooting categorized as “workplace violence” and not terrorism. The Trump Administration sees it very differently.
At his 2013 court-martial, Hasan put up almost no defense. He was convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder and sentenced to death. He has been held at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Why it took so long
Military death penalty cases move slowly, and Hasan’s was no exception. According to the Daily Caller News Foundation, he exhausted his final appeal of the death sentence in April 2025. Only then could the case go to the president, the one official who must personally approve any military execution.
Even now, it may not be over. The AP, citing a May 2026 article in Army Lawyer magazine, reported that Hasan could still try to delay or stop the execution through habeas corpus petitions in civilian federal courts, which could take years.
Hasan is one of four people on military death row, according to ABC News and the Daily Caller News Foundation. The last military execution was in 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was put to death for rape and attempted murder.
The “workplace violence” years
Many Americans still remember how the Obama administration handled the attack. The Pentagon at the time classified it as “workplace violence” rather than terrorism, a decision that drew heavy criticism given Hasan’s own words, BizPac Review noted. Victims were later made eligible for the Purple Heart, the Washington Examiner noted.
Opponents of the death penalty object to executions in general. But Hasan’s guilt has never been in doubt. He told jurors himself that the evidence would show he was the shooter, according to the AP.
The bottom line
This case was never complicated. A commissioned officer turned his weapon on unarmed fellow soldiers, admitted it and was sentenced to death by a military jury more than a decade ago. What was complicated was Washington’s willingness to call it what it was and to follow through.
For years, that willingness was missing. The attack was filed under “workplace violence,” and the sentence sat. President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have now done what the law and the jury called for. That is not cruelty. It is justice delayed, finally arriving.
The families of the 13 people killed at Fort Hood have waited 17 years. December 3 should be the end of that wait, and the courts should not let a man who openly declared war on his own Army drag it out any longer.