Earlier this week, the president approved War Secretary Pete Hegseth's recommendation that Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan (pictured above) be executed by firing squad for the Nov. 5, 2009, shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist at the time, entered a medical building where soldiers were getting medical checkups and shouted, "Allahu Akbar!" — Arabic for "God is great!" — before opening fire with a laser-sighted handgun.
Thirteen unarmed people were killed, and more than 30 others were injured in the attack, which he unapologetically declared was an effort to stop U.S. soldiers from going to Afghanistan to kill fellow Muslims.
Execution by firing squad is legal in a handful of U.S. states and authorized for certain federal or military cases, but it is rarely used because lethal injection remains the primary standard and public perceptions view shooting as severe.
Some legal experts believe Tennessee's botched lethal injection of Christa Pike over the weekend may have influenced President Trump's decision to approve a firing squad for the Fort Hood shooter.
Just days after surviving her execution, Pike is reportedly conscious, breathing on her own and speaking at a Nashville hospital.
Neither the White House nor the Pentagon confirmed whether her case directly drove the choice of method, and they did not respond to media inquiries regarding the specific reasoning behind selecting a firing squad.
Bob Maginnis, president of Maginnis Strategies LLC, says the death penalty order is appropriate in this case.
"The guy murdered innocent people. I see no reason to keep him alive," he submits. "He has been living on the taxpayer dollar."
"These radicals just go in there and think that they can take innocent life to somehow please their so-called god," Maginnis continues. "It's appalling."
The Christian argument for just government executions relies on specific biblical passages from both the Old and New Testaments that establish the sanctity of human life, the moral proportionality of punishment and the divinely ordained authority of the civil state.
It is rooted in the belief that human life is sacred because it is made in the image of God. According to biblical texts such as Genesis 9:6 and Romans 13, taking an innocent life is a direct offense against God, and the civil government has a divinely given authority to "bear the sword" to enforce justice.
In this view, executing a murderer is not about personal revenge but about the state carrying out a proportional, God-ordained punishment that honors the high value of the victim's life and restrains evil in society.
Nidal Hasan's direct military appeals have been exhausted, but legal experts note he could still file a civilian habeas corpus appeal, and Maginnis, a Christian who publicly frames his work and worldview in explicitly Christian terms, says actually carrying out the execution will be difficult because of the appeal process.
"Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court, if it's appealed frequently, will have to weigh in, and they'll have to decide whether or not the commander-in-chief, the president of the United States, can exercise that right," the analyst tells AFN. "I think it's straightforward; Trump can push it, but ultimately, I don't think that in the judicial system that he can make the final decision as to whether or not this guy ought to be put to death."
"I certainly support the idea," Maginnis adds, "but it's the system that we have."
According to the BBC, Hasan's execution is very likely to happen because the president and the war secretary have officially approved and scheduled it.
Acting Army Secretary Adam R. Telle announced that the execution is scheduled for Dec. 3, 2026, at Fort Hood (currently Fort Cavazos) in Texas.
This will be the first U.S. military execution since the end of World War II.
