The shooting of the perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre will be public. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said so. Nidal Hasan “will face a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be, and we will make sure that people can witness it, that it will be public because people need to understand that there are serious consequences for this type of thing,” Hegseth highlighted. The United States has not conducted a public execution in 90 years.
The performance will be broadcast live. The American media reported this based on what a Pentagon official said. The firing squad will be deployed on December 3 against the former US Army major. Nidal Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others.
“I don’t know if it will actually happen. This man carried out the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. If it ends up being live streamed, I won’t watch it.” Thus US Vice President JD Vance, responding in Ohio to a question on how to reconcile his Christian faith with the Pentagon’s announcement that it wanted to live stream the execution.
“The absolute ban on torture prohibits public executions,” said Shabia Mantoo, spokeswoman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, during a briefing. “Failure to comply with this prohibition would inevitably make the execution arbitrary, amounting to a violation of the right to life,” he said.
“As highlighted by the High Commissioner for Human Rights in relation to public executions in Afghanistan and Iran, such executions constitute a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” he said.
“Our God is the God of life: in no way can Hassan’s actions be justified but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.” Thus the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Paul Stagg Coakley.
Meanwhile, Jamaal Howard, a 46-year-old American, was executed in Texas by lethal injection, in what is the first execution after the repeatedly failed attempt against Christa Pike in Tennessee, just a week earlier. Howard, sentenced to death for killing a sales clerk during a robbery in 2000, is the thirtieth death penalty carried out in the United States in 2026.
The man was pronounced dead after administering a lethal dose of pentobarbital at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. When the prison director asked him if he had a final statement to make, Howard apologized to some of the victim’s family, who were watching the execution through a glass window a few meters from the death chamber. “I hope you accept my apology and I hope for your forgiveness,” he said shortly before the lethal injection began. “I’m sorry for what happened. I hope that one day you can learn to forgive me,” he added, thanking friends and family and saying he loved them. He also said he was “serene and ready to find peace and the Lord; I thank you all”. He concluded by saying, “Enjoy life and peace to you all.”