>>31344 (OP)Hegseth’s push for Hasan’s execution
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, meanwhile, has pushed for Hasan’s execution for much of his tenure, according to two U.S. officials, but his focus on the case predates his time at the Pentagon.
In 2015, during an appearance on Fox News making the case that troops should be permitted to carry weapons on military bases, Hegseth invoked the Fort Hood shooting. “We are at war. Islamics are at war with us,” he said.
A decade later, in his role as Pentagon chief, Hegseth made his position on Hasan more explicit. “I am 100% committed to ensuring the death penalty is carried out for Nidal Hasan,” he told The Hill in September last year. “The victims and survivors deserve justice without delays.”
Internal documents reviewed by ABC News show that, since at least February, Army officials were developing a plan dubbed “Operation Resolute Justice.”
That plan envisioned lethal injection if the president authorized an execution in Terre Haute, Indiana, at the same prison complex where a series of federal executions happened during Trump’s first term.
From the mid-1980s until 2023, lethal injection was the default method of Army executions, until their rules were rewritten to give the Army secretary broad authority as to execution methods.
A military court can impose a death sentence, but carrying it out requires a separate chain of civilian approval. The service secretary, in this case acting Army Secretary Adam Telle, who has been in the job for about a month, must first sign off. The decision then goes to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth before ultimately reaching the president, who has the final authority to approve the execution.
How the Army has conducted firing squad executions
Among the unanswered questions are how the Army will select the soldiers who would serve as executioners and how it will train them for a task the military has not carried out in more than a half-century.
The Army’s most detailed procedures for carrying out an execution by firing squad date to 1959 and have not been updated since. The Army is quickly developing a new procedure on conducting firing squad executions, according to a service official.
But under those old execution rules, a condemned prisoner would be given consistent access to a chaplain, and, when practical, reasonable final requests, according to documentation reviewed by ABC News.
The execution itself called for eight riflemen led by a senior enlisted soldier armed with a pistol. The firing squad would take up position in a straight line, 15 paces from the prisoner, whose wrists and ankles would be restrained. A chaplain could remain with the prisoner up until the final moments before the shooting is ordered.
Between one and three of the eight rifles would be loaded with blanks, and the shooters would select their weapons at random. The prisoner would be dressed in a military uniform stripped of awards, insignia and other markings.
After being given an opportunity to make a final statement, the prisoner would be hooded and a medical officer would place a four-inch target over the heart. The chaplain and medical officer would then move away.
The firing squad would be ordered to aim and fire simultaneously. If the prisoner survived, the rules called for the senior enlisted leader of the firing squad to approach with their pistol, aim above the prisoner’s ear and fire 12 inches from the head.
It is unclear how closely the Army will adhere to those decades-old procedures in Hasan’s case, or how they might be adapted for a prisoner who is paralyzed and uses a wheelchair.