Daniel Wolfram
Not since the Second World War has an former US soldier been executed by firing suqad.
Capital punishment is not uncommon in the United States of America.
It was just last week that the execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee was botched after she survived two lethal injections.
Donald Trump has now acted on that failed attempt and ordered a more direct and violent approach for a convicted killer.
A return to the firing squad
Trump has ordered the convicted murderer Nidal Hasan to be executed by firing squad.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote on social media last night that “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recommended — and President Donald J. Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan.”
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Pete Hegseth also commented on the announcement with a single word, “Justice.” This execution is a larger part of the operation that Hegseth has named “Operation Resolute Justice” where the US Army is set on executing the four people who are currently on death row in the military.
Fort Hood killing
Nidal Hasan, who is a former US Army Major, was convicted and sent to death row in 2013 after he drove to the Fort Hood army base with a loaded weapon, screamed “Allahu Akbar” and proceeded to kill 13 American soldiers and injure 32 back in 2009.
Hasan was motivated by radical Islamic faith to kill American soldiers and protect his “Muslim brothers” in Afghanistan, who at that time, were still fighting against American forces.
The US Senate called the attack on Fort Hood the worst act of terrorism in America since 9/11 even though Hasan was eventually not charged with terrorism, but with mass murder.
He was sentenced to be executed by lethal injection, but as the Death Penalty Information Center points out, those death penalties usually end up commuted to life imprisonment.
Not seen since World War II
As state authorities re-evaluate lethal injection protocols following botched procedures, the federal government is moving toward harsher, legacy execution methods.
The US Army has not executed an American soldier since 1961 and not by firing squad since Dan Lee was convicted of rape in 1945 during the Second World War.
There is also the debate on whether or not death by firing squad is humane. The liberal US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote back in 2017 that firing squads were a much more humane way of execution than lethal injection. That debate is once again relevant with the case of Christa Pike.
However, Austin Sarat, a legal professor, argues in an op-ed piece that firing squad execution is just a “part of a morbid search for ‘better’ execution methods.”
According to Sarat, there is no “correct” or “humane” way of execution as every method is eventually deemed “gruesome and offensive” once the methods and procedures are botched and further examined.
