Hegseth wants America to watch a firing squad execution. It’s drawing backlash

By Kaanita Iyer, CNN

(CNN) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s confirmation Thursday that the firing squad death of the Fort Hood mass shooter will be livestreamed was swiftly met with bipartisan outrage and questions over how the public execution will be carried out.

Firing squad executions are rare in the US (though they have been sparingly used as an alternative to lethal injection recently,) and public displays of the death penalty are even less common. The last public execution is considered to be the 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea, a Black man from Kentucky who was found guilty of raping a White woman by an all-White jury.

About 90 years later, on December 3 at 1 p.m. local time, the public will be able to watch Nidal Hasan’s death at Texas’ Fort Hood, where he killed 13 people in a 2009 mass shooting.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth told far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec in an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday.

But Vice President JD Vance cast doubt Friday on whether the execution would actually be livestreamed, saying, “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen.” He added that he would not watch the execution if it were livestreamed.

Sheri Lynn Johnson, the assistant director of the Death Penalty Project at Cornell Law School, told CNN that while access to executions has been given to members of the media, the defendant’s counsel and, in some cases, their family members, allowing the public to watch could desensitize the public to death.

“It’s … particularly celebrating death in a very violent way, which seems to me both an additional infringement on the dignity of the person executed, and, and also something that hardens the public to the idea that murder is wrong or death is wrong,” Johnson said.

Here’s what we know so far about the scheduled livestream of Hasan’s execution.

What is a firing squad execution?

Hasan’s death will be carried out by US “soldiers with rifles,” Hegseth said.

CNN asked the Pentagon several logistical questions, including who the soldiers would be, how they will be chosen and who will be running the livestream. The department said it will provide more details as it gets them.

Military death penalties and their methods must be approved by the president. Earlier this week, President Donald Trump agreed to Hegseth’s recommendation of a firing squad for Hasan. The move set up what would be the US Army’s first such execution of a soldier since World War II and the first imposition of any death penalty on an armed service member in 65 years.

More broadly, there have only been six firing squad executions since 1977, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Three of them took place last year in South Carolina — 15 years after the previous one.

Firing squad executions could be making a comeback as a handful of US death penalty states explore alternatives to lethal injection, by far the nation’s dominant execution method.

States have faced several issues with lethal injection deaths, like legal challenges by inmates, inadequate supplies and failed executions, as seen recently in the case of Christa Pike, who survived an execution attempt in Tennessee. In comparison, experts say the firing squad is generally thought to be fast and effective. But the fact that the method is overtly violent has likely contributed to states’ hesitancy to use it.

Only five states permit a firing squad to be used for executions, according to the DPIC. As of July 2026, it is the main method in Idaho.

Previous attempt at a televised execution

Timothy McVeigh, the man convicted of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, had requested that his execution be televised nationally.

An entertainment company even filed a legal challenge to be able to live stream it, but a federal court rejected the attempt.

Ultimately, the execution by lethal injection was televised to a limited group of people that included survivors of the bombing and victims’ families.

Then-US Attorney General John Ashcroft, in his approval of the closed-circuit telecast, recognized that there are “precedential procedures” in televising the execution but made the case that the McVeigh case had “unique circumstances.”

Very few countries carry out public executions

According to reports from Amnesty International, which opposes the death penalty, public executions took place in Afghanistan and Iran in recent years. In 2025, there were six public executions in Afghanistan and 11 in Iran.

The organization has also said earlier this year that through interviews, it has learned that North Korea also uses the method “to terrorize entire communities into compliance.”

‘America is better than that’: Bipartisan criticism pours in

The announcement of Hasan’s public execution drew criticism from both sides of the aisle, with people making the case that America should not be like authoritarian countries where public executions more commonly take place.

Outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, said in a post on X, “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”

Georgia GOP Rep. Austin Scott raised similar concerns, saying that while he supports the death penalty, “live-streaming executions is what jihadists do. America is better than that.”

Republican Sen. John Curtis on X highlighted the “bloody spectacles” that took place in ancient Rome, writing, “A civilization erodes when it cultivates an appetite for executions as a form of entertainment.”

“Secretary Hegseth’s plan to livestream the Fort Hood execution risks feeding that appetite. The victims deserve justice administered with solemnity,” Curtis wrote. “Broadcasting a death diminishes us and is not an effective deterrent. I urge him to reconsider.”

Similarly, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut called the plan “disgusting” and “medieval.”

“What is he mimicking ISIS executions?,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett, referring to Hegseth.

The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops called it a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death.”

“The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people,” Archbishop Paul Coakley said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Joe Kent, a former high-ranking US intelligence official who resigned over the Iran war earlier this year, argued that Hasan’s death could be used as propaganda by terrorists.

“Streaming his 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 like” Hasan, Kent said in a post on X.

Peter Bergen, a CNN national security analyst, said the livestream could give terrorist groups material to “exploit.”

“If a video exists, groups will try to turn it into propaganda,” he said. Bergen, who has covered Hasan extensively, added that the gunman sees himself as a “religious warrior” and a “public video of his execution would play into his narrative of who he is.”

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CNN’s Haley Britzky, Dakin Andone and Alejandra Jaramillo contributed to this report.