America's First Live-Streamed Military Execution Raises Questions

A Firing Squad, Broadcast Live

On December 3, a former Army psychiatrist will be shot by a five-man firing squad inside Fort Hood, Texas. The Pentagon has confirmed it will broadcast the execution live to the public.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated plainly that the goal is transparency — that citizens should witness what he called the consequences of the crime. But no American execution has ever been live-streamed. No military execution has used a firing squad since 1945, when Private Eddie Slovik was put to death for desertion during World War II. The method itself is a relic. The decision to revive it, and to stream it, is something else entirely.

Nidal Hasan killed 13 people at Fort Hood in November 2009. He was a military psychiatrist treating soldiers preparing for deployment to Afghanistan. On that day, he opened fire in a crowded medical clinic. He pleaded guilty. He has been on death row ever since.

His lawyer, John Mills, says the execution faces an uphill legal battle. Hasan’s direct appeals have not been exhausted. There is also a petition for a new trial pending before federal courts. If granted, the sentence would be paused. Mills has publicly expressed doubt that the December 3 date will hold.

The Irony Is Intentional

That Hegseth proceeded anyway — announcing the live stream, the date, the method — suggests the spectacle matters more than the sentence. And the spectacle is carefully chosen.

A firing squad evokes a century of military discipline. It is deliberately anachronistic. The United States executed convicted murderes by lethal injection, electrocution, gas, and hanging over the decades. The firing squad was abandoned. Reviving it signals a return to something older, something militarized, something meant to be seen.

Streaming it multiplies that signal. Hegseth’s argument is that Americans should understand that crimes carry consequences. But no court has required transparency of this kind. Several states mandate that journalists or victims’ families witness executions. None has mandated a public broadcast.

Fordham law professor Deborah Denno called the prospect a level of forced transparency unlike anything the country has seen. She noted that while support for the death penalty is declining, it still holds a majority. The government’s case could be simple: if citizens want capital punishment, they should see how it works.

But there is a line between witnessing an execution and being asked to watch it on screen. Platforms will likely refuse to carry it. Most major social networks prohibit graphic content. An age-restricted stream on a government site would reach far fewer people than a viral clip on a platform that will almost certainly not host it.

The Global Mirror

The irony extends beyond American legal tradition.

Amnesty International reported that in 2025, at least 2,700 executions took place across 17 countries. Only two of those were public. Iran conducted at least 11 public hangings. Afghanistan conducted six. The United States has never held a public execution in the modern era, and now it is proposing a global one.

This is not lost on observers. Donald Trump has previously criticized Iran for executing protest demonstrators, citing those killings as justification for military action. Now the United States is proposing to do something structurally similar — broadcasting state violence to a global audience — under the banner of transparency.

Trump signed an executive order restoring federal executions when he returned to office in 2025. His first term saw 13 federal executions between July 2020 and January 2021, ending a 17-year pause. The firing squad decision marks a further escalation in style and tone.

Who Wins, Who Loses

The immediate winner is the political narrative. Hegseth and the administration gain a moment of visibility. The decision is framed as toughness, as accountability, as closing a book on a man who murdered 13 soldiers.

The losers are harder to name but more consequential. The military justice system loses a boundary it has maintained for decades — that executions are serious, solemn, and conducted with procedural restraint, not as media events. Legal scholars on all sides will face pressure to define whether a live-streamed execution violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. That question has never been tested.

Hasan himself loses whatever remaining claim to dignity the legal process still affords him. Mills argued that the live-stream plan is a grotesque spectacle, designed for attention rather than justice. He is likely correct about the attention. Whether it is designed to undermine justice is a legal question the courts have not yet answered.

What Comes Next

The execution may not happen on December 3. The appeals process is the strongest check. But even if the date shifts, the policy decision stands. The Pentagon has committed to a precedent.

International audiences — particularly in countries where public executions are routine — will read this through their own histories. Japan, South Korea, and other US alliance partners will note the contrast between American criticism of authoritarian practices and the direction of its own policy. The message will not be subtle.

Domestically, the debate will split along familiar lines. Death penalty supporters will welcome the transparency. Civil liberties advocates will call it theatrical cruelty. Courts will be asked to decide whether streaming an execution is a matter of public access or an unconstitutional performance.

The firing squad was supposed to stay in the past. The live stream is trying to pull it back into the present.