President Trump has approved death by U.S. Army firing squad for Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter who killed 13 nearly 17 years ago, clearing the path for the first successful military execution since 1961.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced Monday that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recommended the sentence and that President Donald J. Trump signed off. The Army secretary will now set the time and place.
Fox News reported the decision closes a long legal chapter after the Nov. 5, 2009, attack at Fort Hood, where Hasan opened fire on unarmed soldiers at a readiness processing facility.
Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 32. He shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the shooting, took a pistol and a.357 revolver, and fired into the densest group of soldiers he could find before a firefight with law enforcement left him wounded and in intensive care.
Parnell laid out the approval in plain terms on X.
"Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recommended, and President Donald J. Trump has approved, death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009. He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting 'Allahu Akbar' during the attack."
Parnell added a second line that captured the stakes for the families who waited nearly two decades.
"Judgment day for Hasan has finally come."
Hasan, a former Army officer stationed at Fort Hood, faced a court-martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice about four years after the attack. A military jury sentenced him to death.
Because the death penalty was imposed, the case moved automatically through the military appeals system. An Army press release explained the path at the time of sentencing.
"Given that the death sentence was imposed, the military justice system requires this case to be automatically appealed to the U.S. Army Criminal Court of Appeals and then to the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces."
Lead prosecutor Col. Michael Mulligan rested the government’s case on the morning of Aug. 27 after two days of testimony from surviving widows and parents. Joleen Cahill told the court her husband, retired Chief Warrant Officer Michael Cahill, gave his life trying to stop Hasan and described the devastation that followed for her family.
A court upheld the death sentence in early 2025. Hasan’s lawyers then sought Supreme Court review on procedural objections to how the trial was run. The high court denied review.
That denial left the sentence intact and put the final decision in the hands of the civilian leadership of the Department of War and the president, the same kind of high-stakes call Trump has faced when weighing life-or-death outcomes in other conflicts.
A Sanity Board report quoted Hasan directly on his intent. He denied depressive, manic, psychotic, anxiety, or cognitive symptoms during the attack. He did not leave his purpose unclear.
"I shot to kill."
Those four words matched the scene survivors described: unarmed soldiers in an administrative building, a shooter who had just left noon prayers at a mosque, and a deliberate choice of the densest target available.
Military justice moved slower than many families wanted. Automatic appeals, years of litigation, and a final Supreme Court denial stretched the case from 2009 into 2025. The victims’ relatives lived with that delay while the man who opened fire on their loved ones remained alive under sentence.
Accountability for mass killings of Americans is not a side issue. It is the core duty of a government that sends soldiers to process for deployment and expects them to return home. Decisions that touch mortality and national security have defined other recent presidential actions as well, including when Trump pressed hard on health policy over the objections of aides.
If the Army carries out the sentence, it will be the first time a president has successfully signed off on a U.S. military execution since 1961. Pvt. John Bennett was hanged on April 13, 1961, after he attempted to murder an 11-year-old girl in Austria.
President George W. Bush approved a military execution in a later case, but a federal court stopped it in 2008. Trump’s approval of the Hegseth recommendation therefore clears a barrier that has stood for more than six decades.
The method chosen is a U.S. Army firing squad. The Army secretary still must set the exact time and place. No date has been announced.
That remaining step does not erase what the approval already signals. After years of court process, the civilian chain of command has stated that the sentence stands and that the punishment will be carried out by the service Hasan once wore. Similar finality has marked other Trump decisions that closed long-running foreign-policy files, including when he signed sweeping Russia sanctions into law.
On Nov. 5, 2009, Hasan left a mosque after noon prayers, drove to the soldier readiness processing facility at Fort Hood, and opened fire. Thirteen died. Thirty-two were wounded. Law enforcement ended the attack in a firefight. Hasan took multiple gunshot wounds, was detained, and went to intensive care.
He knew the soldiers in that building would be unarmed. He chose the densest concentration of them. He shouted a phrase that made his ideological claim unmistakable to everyone who heard it. The court-martial, the death sentence, the automatic appeals, the early 2025 affirmance, and the Supreme Court denial all followed from those facts.
Parnell’s announcement did not invent a new case. It finished a process the military justice system started years earlier and that civilian leadership has now allowed to reach its final stage. When presidents face choices that protect American lives under fire, the pattern has been to move from deliberation to decision, as when Trump finalized approval for Ukraine to produce Patriot missiles.
The families of the 13 dead and the 32 wounded have waited through every appeal. Michael Cahill’s widow testified that her husband died trying to stop the shooter. Other widows and parents spent two days on the stand so the prosecution could rest its case. Their testimony is part of the official record. The sentence that followed is also part of that record.
Public debate often softens the language around attacks on U.S. troops. The official statements in this case did not. Parnell called Hasan a convicted terrorist and a jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers. The Sanity Board recorded Hasan’s own admission that he shot to kill. The numbers, 13 dead, 32 wounded, have never changed.
Deaths that shock a community demand clear answers from the people in charge. That principle holds whether the toll is measured on a military post or in a public-health crisis, the kind of accountability fight seen when officials pointed fingers after measles deaths in Pennsylvania.
The Army secretary still has to set the calendar. Until that order issues, the sentence remains approved but not scheduled. The legal path that produced it, however, is complete: court-martial, death sentence, automatic military appeals, affirmance in early 2025, Supreme Court denial, Hegseth recommendation, and Trump approval.
Soldiers who report for processing should not have to wonder whether the man who murdered their comrades will face the full penalty a military jury already imposed. Nearly 17 years is long enough. The chain of command has now said the wait is over.
