US President Donald Trump has canceled a plan to livestream the scheduled execution of Nidal Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting. Trump said the firing-squad execution would still take place on December 3, but the event would not be streamed.
The decision reversed a proposal promoted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who had said the execution would be made public and later confirmed plans for a livestream. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Hegseth and Trump spoke before the reversal and that the defense secretary supported the president's decision. Immediate relatives of victims would still be permitted to witness the execution in person if they chose, according to Trump's announcement.
Opposition to broadcasting the death came from across political and institutional lines. Democratic and Republican lawmakers objected, as did the Catholic Church, the United Nations and the prime ministers of Australia and Britain. The UN said a livestream would amount to torture, while the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned the proposed broadcast.
Public opinion also weighed heavily against it. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Thursday found that eight in ten Americans opposed livestreaming the execution. Dozens of retired military officers, including more than 40 generals and admirals, signed an open letter warning that the broadcast would damage the military's honor and risk turning Hasan into a martyr.
Hasan was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013. Twelve of the 13 people killed at Fort Hood were soldiers, and 30 of those wounded were military personnel. Hasan, who was shot by a responding civilian police officer and left paralyzed from the waist down, represented himself during the trial and did not deny the charges.
If carried out as planned, the execution would be the first by a US military firing squad since 1945. The most recent US military execution of any kind occurred in 1961, when John Bennett was hanged after convictions for rape and attempted murder. The Death Penalty Information Center records 135 military executions since 1916.
Trump indicated that he personally saw a broadcast as a possible deterrent, but said others did not want to watch Hasan die. Lawmakers who welcomed the cancellation continued to criticize Hegseth's judgment in advancing the plan. The reversal resolves the immediate question of a government livestream while leaving the execution itself, its date and access for victims' relatives unchanged.
