The Army Rule Governing Hasan's Execution Provides for Two Pool Reporters, Not a Livestream

The Army regulation that governs military executions lists who may be present when a condemned prisoner dies. The named groups are the prison commandant, the execution team, the prisoner's counsel and relatives if he asks, surviving victims and their relatives, and at least two media representatives chosen from a pool. A broadcast is not on the list.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Real America's Voice News that the December 3 execution of Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood would be public. He spoke during a visit to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. "We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public," he said, according to the Associated Press. Pentagon officials said the next day that it would be livestreamed. Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting.

What the regulation provides

The regulation was certified current on October 30, 2023. Its method clause is one line: military executions will be carried out by a method the Secretary of the Army designates. The regulation's own summary of changes traces that discretion to a March 5, 2019 revision, which also deleted the words "lethal injection" throughout. The AP and ABC News both describe the change as a 2023 update, so the reporting and the document disagree on the year.

According to an Army announcement, Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle directed the execution on October 6, after President Trump approved the death sentence on October 2. The regulation requires a date 60 to 150 days after presidential approval. December 3 falls 62 days after October 2, inside the window.

On witnesses the text is just as specific. No one under 18 may witness an execution. Press access runs through a pool, with a media advisory explaining it due at least 14 days before the date. The identities of the execution team, section 3-1 says, "will be kept confidential to the fullest extent permitted by law."

Where the firing squad complicates a broadcast

ABC News reported that Army planners had prepared since at least February for lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Thursday's announcement surprised some of them, according to two officials with direct knowledge. One official said the Army's last written firing squad procedures date to 1959, and planners are adapting them. Those procedures call for the squad's commander to shoot the prisoner in the head with a pistol if the first volley fails.

ABC reported it is unclear whether the soldiers would wear masks on camera, or whether YouTube, Facebook and X would carry a stream. That account rests on unnamed officials, and the Army has not published a firing squad protocol.

The objections, and the defense on record

Opposition crossed party lines. Senator Thom Tillis, a retiring North Carolina Republican whose vote helped confirm Hegseth, wrote that "public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do." Representative Austin Scott, a Georgia Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, supports the death sentence but said "live-streaming executions is what jihadists do." Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called it a "barbaric spectacle."

Reed also said Trump would have to approve a waiver to make the execution public, according to Al Jazeera. The regulation's text puts waiver authority with its proponent, the Provost Marshal General. In the text, the President's role is approving and ordering the execution.

Representative Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican, took the other side: "public execution is what this terrorist deserves." The Pentagon has offered no rationale beyond Hegseth's own remarks. Asked whether Hasan had made final requests, Hegseth answered, "Don't care. We'll see him on December 3rd."

Three descriptions of the same plan

Vance told reporters before a campaign rally in Ohio, "I don't know that that's going to happen," and said he would not watch. Trump told ABC News, "They're making a determination about that," and added that he does not care how Hasan dies "as long as he goes." The White House referred questions to the Pentagon, which told Al Jazeera it had nothing additional to provide.

Two military-law specialists told the AP that Hasan may be the only person with standing to challenge a livestream. "Other than Hasan, I'm not sure anyone could," said Brenner Fissell of Villanova University's law school. Fissell raised one novel theory, that a livestream reaches viewers under 18 and "violates the spirit of the regulation." Eugene Fidell of Yale Law School called such a suit "very unlikely" but said a habeas petition from Hasan could delay the execution so long that it "might outlast the current administration." Hasan has not said whether he will contest anything.

If it proceeds, this would be the military's first execution since Army Pvt. John Bennett was hanged on April 13, 1961, and its first by firing squad since Pvt. Eddie Slovik in 1945. The Pentagon has said livestream, the vice president has said he is unsure, and the president has said a determination is pending. The regulation, in its current text, says nothing at all.