Trump’s ‘Judgment day’? Why death penalty crusade is bringing back firing squads

Army Major Nidal Hasan, the gunman behind the 2009 Fort Hood attack, is set to die by firing squad after President Donald Trump signed off on his sentence, according to chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell. Military law bars carrying out a court-martial death sentence until a president approves it, and that approval came Monday. If it proceeds, it would be the military's first firing-squad execution since Private Eddie Slovik in 1945, and it fits an administration drive to speed up capital punishment. Trump posted on X that Hasan's "judgment day" had arrived. Death Penalty Action, an abolitionist nonprofit, accused the president of loving the power to kill, according to The Independent.

Hasan, who represented himself, was convicted on 45 counts of murder and sentenced in 2013 for a shooting that left 13 dead and 32 wounded. He admitted responsibility. Trump's first term saw 13 federal executions, the most under any president in over 120 years, while Joe Biden commuted 37 federal death sentences and left three. Trump's executive order and a Justice Department plan now push pentobarbital, firing squads and even electrocution. Drug shortages and botched lethal injections, including Tennessee's failed attempt on Christa Pike, who survived and was hospitalized, have fueled the shift.

Summarized by PolitiKool from The Independent’s reporting. Read the full story at The Independent →