December 3, 2026. 1 p.m. Central Time. Fort Hood, Texas — the same patch of ground where Nidal Hasan murdered thirteen unarmed soldiers on November 5, 2009. That's when a five-man firing squad will end what seventeen years of legal maneuvering could not.
The last U.S. military execution was a hanging in 1961.
The Army announced they had set an execution date after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump approved the execution and method. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell put it plainly: "Judgement day for Hasan has finally come."
Hasan was an Army psychiatrist — a Major with two decades of service — stationed at Fort Hood's Soldier Readiness Center. The soldiers he targeted were unarmed, processing paperwork before deploying overseas. He opened fire after shouting "Allahu Akbar," squeezing off 146 rounds before base police shot him and left him paralyzed from the chest down. Thirteen dead. Thirty-two wounded. The youngest victim, Pfc. Aaron Nemelka, was nineteen years old.
The dead included Lt. Col. Juanita Warman, 55. Maj. Libardo Eduardo Caraveo, 52. Capt. John Gaffaney, 56. Spc. Jason Dean Hunt, 22. Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21 — she was pregnant. Her unborn child died with her. Michael Grant Cahill, a 62-year-old civilian physician's assistant, was killed trying to charge Hasan with a chair.
For seventeen years, the legal system did what legal systems do when nobody in charge actually wants an outcome. Hasan sat on death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, while appeals wound through military courts at the speed of bureaucratic indifference.
The Obama administration classified the massacre as "workplace violence" — a designation so absurd that Congress eventually had to pass legislation to get the victims Purple Hearts. Nadal screamed "Allahu Akbar" as he sprayed bullets upon the unsuspecting soldiers so it was obvious to everyone this was an Islamic terrorist attack and not a man having a bad day at work.
Hasan, now 56, never denied what he did. He told the court he did it. He wanted to plead guilty. The military court wouldn't let him, because capital cases require a full trial. So taxpayers funded his defense, his appeals, his medical care for the paralysis he earned by murdering American soldiers, and his continued existence on death row for more than a decade and a half.
The last military firing squad execution was Pvt. Eddie Slovik in World War II France — for desertion. The last military execution of any kind was the hanging of Pvt. John Bennett in 1961, sixty-five years ago. Bennet had raped and tried to kill an 11 year old Austrian girl.
The thirteen families who buried soldiers and a civilian that November have waited since 2009 for the sentence a military jury handed down to actually mean something. Three administrations looked at the case and found reasons to wait. This one found a date, a time, and a method.
