Nidal Hasan is set to face a firing squad — and the reason behind the unusual execution method is raising almost as many questions as the execution itself.
The former Army psychiatrist, convicted of killing 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, is scheduled to be executed on December 3, 2026.
But unlike most recent executions in the United States, Hasan will not face lethal injection.
First in six decades
Instead, he is set to become the first person executed by the U.S. military in more than six decades — and the first military prisoner put to death by firing squad since 1945.
So why a firing squad?
The answer goes back to the fact that Hasan was convicted under the military justice system.
Military death sentences require presidential approval before they can be carried out. President Donald Trump approved Hasan’s execution following a recommendation from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and the Army then moved to schedule the execution.
The firing squad is also significant because military executions have historically been carried out differently from civilian executions.
The last person executed by the U.S. military was Pvt. John Bennett, who was hanged in 1961. The last known U.S. military firing-squad execution took place in 1945.
That makes Hasan’s case exceptionally rare.
And the timing is impossible to ignore.
Failed execution brings renewed attention
His execution was approved just days after Tennessee’s attempt to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection went disastrously wrong, leaving her hospitalized.
Pike had previously challenged the use of lethal injection and asked officials to consider alternative methods, including a firing squad.
Hasan’s case is different, however. His death sentence comes from a military court, and his execution is being handled through the military justice system rather than Tennessee’s state system.
Still, the failed execution has brought renewed attention to the practical problems surrounding lethal injection.
The Trump administration has also expanded the number of federal execution methods available, including firing squads, amid continuing difficulties obtaining lethal-injection drugs.
May not be the final word
For Hasan, the decision has now been made.
Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle announced that the execution is scheduled to take place at Fort Hood, the same Texas military base where Hasan carried out the attack.
But there is still an important question surrounding what happens next.
The Army has not publicly provided detailed information about exactly how the firing squad will be ᴀssembled or how the execution itself will be carried out. Military regulations do not spell out a detailed firing-squad procedure.
But despite the Army setting a date, legal experts warn that it may not be the final word.
Military law expert and Yale professor Eugene Fidell says Hasan could still take legal action that could delay the execution.
”There’s nothing common about this case. It’s a, it’s a unique case,” Fidell told 25ABC and added: ”The biggest question now is whether Dr. Hᴀssan, either on his own or with the benefit of attorneys, will go to federal court to try to stop the train at this point, or at least slow it down.”
According to legal experts cited by The ᴀssociated Press, a habeas corpus peтιтion could potentially delay the execution, possibly for a significant period of time.
Who is Nidal Hasan?
Nidal Hasan was an Army major and psychiatrist when he opened fire inside a medical facility at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009.
Soldiers were waiting for medical appointments when Hasan began shooting with a handgun equipped with a laser sight.
Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 others were wounded. Hasan was sH๏τ by police during the attack and was left paralyzed from the waist down.
During his court-martial, Hasan admitted that he was the shooter and described himself as a soldier who had “switched sides.”
He was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to death.
Now, more than 17 years after the Fort Hood attack, his execution is scheduled to take place at the very same military installation where the killings occurred.
Long-standing connection to military tradition
The U.S. Army has turned to firing squads as a method of execution several times throughout its history, with the most recent case dating back to 1945.
While the method may appear unusual today, Stephen Jewell, an Austin-based military law attorney with Tully Rinckey PLLC, says it has a long-standing connection to military tradition.
”We haven’t done this in a long, long time, since the early 60s. The firing squad has historic connections to military service, that is how a lot of executions have been carried out within the history of the United States, knowing that this hasn’t happened in a long time. With various difficulties with lethal injection, things like that, that have also been in the news recently, you can only speculate, but, this seems to be very, part and parcel as far as a military function,” Jewell said.
💔 STELLA PARTON BREAKS HER SILENCE — What She Said About Dolly’s Health Has Fans Looking Back
Dolly Parton’s Sister Breaks Silence What Really Happened - GMT - G1
Stella Parton was born May 4, 1949, the sixth of twelve children raised by Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton in Sevierville, Tennessee — a household defined by noise, limited money, and almost no privacy, the kind of environment that produced strong, determined personalities.
Stella was one of them.
By seven, she was appearing alongside her older sister Dolly on a Knoxville television program; by her teens, she was writing her own songs, though marriage and motherhood pulled music to the margins of her life for a stretch.
The dream never fully disappeared.
In 1967, she recorded a gospel album with her mother and sisters, and later worked clubs in Washington, D.C., before founding her own record label in 1975 and releasing “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” which climbed to number nine on the country charts.
Long before any of that commercial success, Stella had already shown a willingness to take positions others avoided.
At 26, amid backlash against Australian singer Olivia Newton-John for winning recognition in country music, Stella recorded “Ode to Olivia” in her defense — a stand that offered her no career benefit and real risk of criticism, but one she took anyway simply because she believed staying silent was the wrong choice.
That instinct defined the rest of her career: hits like “The Danger of a Stranger” and “Steady as the Rain” (written by Dolly) built a genuine, independent following, including in the U.K., while Stella also worked in New York theater and spoke openly, often controversially, about poverty, domestic violence, and the treatment of women in the music industry.
She was named the Christian Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 2004.
Through all of it, she remained defined publicly, more often than not, as simply “Dolly’s little sister” — a label she spent five decades quietly proving didn’t tell the full story.
That same directness is why her comments in the fall of 2025 carried real weight.
Stella had never positioned herself as the family’s image manager or spokesperson; she was, by reputation, someone who believed difficult truths shouldn’t stay hidden indefinitely.
What she described wasn’t dramatic or accusatory — it was a portrait of a woman who had spent years prioritizing everyone else’s needs over her own.
The context mattered.
Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025 at 82, after a long illness during which Dolly had devoted herself almost entirely to his care.
She later acknowledged that in the process, she’d neglected her own health significantly.
The loss reverberated through the whole extended family — the Partons had lost three brothers in the years surrounding this period, compounding grief that, for a family that had once crowded twelve children into a single small home, meant losing pieces of a shared childhood one after another.
Stella herself went seven years without releasing new music during this stretch, later describing the period simply as one shaped by sorrow, while still speaking about the importance of finding moments of laughter within it.
Looking back, one moment reads very differently in hindsight than it did at the time: in late September 2025, Dolly postponed her planned Las Vegas residency, citing health challenges — a rare cancellation for a performer whose six-decade career had included very few of them.
At the time, most fans treated it as a minor, temporary setback.
Stella’s later reflections suggested the signs had actually been building for some time, visible to family in ways the public smile made easy to miss.
That concern crystallized publicly not long after, when Dolly’s younger sister Frieda posted a simple request on Facebook asking fans to pray for Dolly.
What looked at first like an ordinary, well-meaning gesture spread rapidly, sparking widespread speculation about how serious Dolly’s condition actually was.
Dolly herself responded directly within days, appearing in a video from a Grand Ole Opry commercial shoot, insisting with her familiar humor that she wasn’t finished yet — the now widely remembered “I ain’t dead yet” moment that briefly quieted public concern.
In the months that followed, the pattern repeated: reassuring updates about kidney stones, dehydration, and treatment, paired with continued work on new projects, right up until Dolly Parton’s death on August 25, 2026, at 80.
Looking back across that full timeline — the postponed residency, the family’s public worry, Stella’s own account of a sister who consistently deprioritized her own wellbeing — it becomes easier to see what the people closest to Dolly understood well before the rest of the world did: that the warmth and resilience the public saw every time she appeared on camera came at a real, largely invisible cost.
