The Pentagon announced on Thursday that it will livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood gunman, on 3 December. Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 at the Texas base in 2009, and it would be the first US military execution since 1961. President Trump said on Saturday that the final decision on broadcasting is his, after criticism from both parties.
Execution Is Heading Back Into View
It would be the first US military execution by firing squad since 1945, The Business Standard reported. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Daily Caller he is “100 percent committed” to carrying out Hasan’s sentence, and he framed the broadcast as public deterrence. Trump has said he approves of the firing squad, and he did not say whether a broadcast is appropriate, CBS reported.
Retiring Republican Senator Thom Tillis called the plan “beyond disgusting”, and Vice President JD Vance said he would not watch. A broadcast chosen for deterrence invites spectacle rather than transparency. Transparency would mean showing the whole process, including when it fails.
Tennessee Shows Lethal Injection Can Fail
On 30 September, Tennessee tried to execute Christa Pike, convicted of the 1995 killing of her classmate Colleen Slemmer, with pentobarbital. She survived two doses and was put on a ventilator, though her lawyers later said she was conscious and speaking. Governor Bill Lee halted executions for the rest of 2026 and ordered an independent review, and the state’s prisons chief is resigning.
Amnesty International USA counts Pike’s attempt and Tony Carruthers’ earlier one as two botched Tennessee executions this year. Fordham death-penalty expert Deborah Denno said staff “carried out every aspect of the execution”, which points to the method, not just the people. A procedure that looks medical and controlled but fails in the chamber weakens the claim that execution can be made humane.
Lebanon Abolishes While Executions Surge
Lebanon’s parliament voted on 11 August to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment and hard labour, over the opposition of Hezbollah’s bloc.
Existing death sentences are commuted, which affects 84 people on death row, according to the group Together Against the Death Penalty. Lebanon has not executed anyone since January 2004, so the law turned a long pause into a legal ban. AP called it the first Arab country to abolish, but Libnanews noted that Djibouti did so in 1995.
That arrives in a year when Amnesty recorded 2,707 executions in 17 countries in 2025, the highest total since 1981, even though 113 countries have fully abolished the penalty. The US carried out 47 executions in 2025, its most since 2009, and 29 so far in 2026, Amnesty USA reported.
Pope Leo declared capital punishment inadmissible on Saturday, and Cardinal Pietro Parolin called the livestream plan “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death”.
A state that cannot make execution reliable or humane should not be asking the public to watch it.
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