On October 8, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced plans to livestream the public execution by firing squad of Nidal Malik Hasan, a decision that has drawn widespread condemnation in the U.S. and worldwide. Human rights organizations, counterterrorism experts, and a bipartisan chorus of political officials have united in denouncing the planned public execution.
The killing of Mr. Hasan would be the first public execution in the U.S. in more than 85 years and carries disturbing echoes of the era of public spectacle violence in our nation’s past that many hoped we would never return to.
Mr. Hasan is paralyzed from the chest down and uses a wheelchair. He will be wheeled to a space where he will face multiple armed soldiers with rifles. He will be shot to death even though he cannot stand. The Defense Department contends this will demonstrate the power of the American military, while others contend it is a depraved act that screams of moral weakness.
After serving in the U.S. Army as a psychiatrist, Mr. Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas. He stated he wished he had died in the attack in order to achieve martyrdom for protesting U.S. military campaigns in the Middle East. Mr. Hasan survived but told a panel of military mental health experts in 2010 that if he were to be executed for his actions, “I would still be a martyr.”
Public Executions Violate International Law
Hegseth’s announcement of Mr. Hasan’s public execution was condemned globally as an affront to human rights and a violation of international law.
A spokesperson for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights decried the plan as a breach of the prohibition of torture: “Failure to respect this prohibition would inevitably render the execution arbitrary in nature, and result in a violation of the right to life and the absolute prohibition of torture.”
Permitting the death penalty at all already makes the U.S. an outlier among democracies around the world. The only countries that carry out executions publicly, an even smaller group, are some with the worst human rights records such as North Korea, Iran, and Afghanistan.
Earlier this year, Iran staged hangings in a public square of citizens accused of engaging in anti-government protests. Taliban officials in Afghanistan publicly executed at least six people in 2025, some of whom were killed in front of thousands of spectators in sports stadiums.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk previously held that the public executions carried out in Afghanistan and Iran “constitute a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
In addition, the livestreaming of public killings is a frequent tactic of terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.
Bipartisan Opposition to Public Spectacle Executions
The decision was also met with bipartisan rebuke in the U.S. “[M]aking his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting,” Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, wrote. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”
“[L]ive-streaming executions is what jihadists do,” Rep. Austin Scott, a Republican from Georgia, stated. “America is better than that.”
“Calling for a livestream of the execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is disturbing and makes a mockery of our legal system,” the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington, said. “We are a democratic country and should take the rule of law seriously, not turn it into a spectacle.”
Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the proposed livestreaming of the execution “a barbaric spectacle” and “a gift to anti-American terrorist recruiters.”
The Glorification of Violence
Many experts also believe that, rather than serving as a deterrent, a public execution of Mr. Hasan will actually glorify his actions and encourage those who wish to emulate him.
“The video of a wheelchair-bound Hasan executed by firing squad will serve as ready-made propaganda for jihadist groups like Al Qaeda and Islamic State,” counterterrorism expert Colin P. Clarke told the New York Times.
Former director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent wrote, “Streaming [Hasan’s] execution is not just a stain on our morality–it also gives the terrorists free propaganda that they will use to radicalize & recruit more terrorists.”
According to an organization that tracks global terrorism groups, the announcement of a planned public execution by firing squad is already being used to encourage extremist activity on online platforms. Another organization published a report containing an online post from an Al Qaeda supporter which suggested that the public execution of Mr. Hasan could lead to the “hijacking of American planes and the killing of American soldiers.”
Ten thousand people gathered to watch the lynching of Henry Smith in Paris, Texas, on February 1, 1893.
Library of Congress/Getty Images, color by Marina AmaralPublic Spectacle Lynching and Public Executions
The U.S. has not witnessed public executions since the 1930s. Rainey Bethea, a young Black man, was hanged in front of 20,000 people in Owensboro, Kentucky, after he was convicted of raping a white woman in 1936. The state-sponsored hanging of Mr. Bethea came amidst decades of lynchings, during which thousands of Americans were killed by their fellow citizens in spectacle violence.
EJI has documented scores of Black people who were lynched in the U.S. in the 1930s alone, including 10 in the year that Mr. Bethea was publicly hanged.
These killings were often advertised in advance and attracted large mobs that included public officials. Of all lynchings after 1900, only 1% resulted in a mob member ever facing any punishment.
Between 1865 and 1950, at least 16 people of color were lynched in Bell and Coryell counties in Texas, where Fort Hood is located and where Mr. Hasan is scheduled to be executed.
As early as the 1920s, lynchings became increasingly disfavored because of the “bad press” they garnered. In response, state legislatures shifted to capital punishment so that legal and ostensibly unbiased court proceedings could serve the same purposes as vigilante violence.
Yet many public killings in this era were virtually indistinguishable from lynchings and took place alongside the threat of mob violence. Defendants during this era often learned that being sentenced to death rather than lynched did little to increase the fairness of trial, reliability of conviction, or justness of sentence.
Six million Black people fled the American South in response to terrorism and lynching. Bringing back public execution in many ways is a provocation to millions of people who endured lawless spectacle executions with no recourse or government aid.
Racial Disparities in Military Executions
As with civilian trials, military proceedings are also significantly more likely to result in death sentences when the defendant is a person of color compared to if they are white. Since 1951, nine out of the 10 people executed by the U.S. military were Black. Mr. Hasan is an American citizen of Arab descent. His public execution by firing squad has been scheduled for December 3.
Three more Americans remain on the military’s death row.