Key takeaways:
- Hasan is scheduled to be executed by firing squad on Dec. 3 for the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, which killed 13 people and injured more than 30.
- Broglio says Catholic service members assigned to the execution should ask to be excused and warns that broadcasting it could cause moral injury.
- Hegseth says making the execution public would demonstrate serious consequences; several Republican lawmakers have criticized the livestream plan.
The archbishop responsible for the spiritual care of Catholics in the U.S. military is urging Catholic service members to seek exemption from a planned firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, condemning the Pentagon’s plan to livestream it.
Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio said Monday that taking part would conflict with Catholic teaching against the death penalty. He also warned that service members assigned to carry out the execution could suffer “moral injury.”
“Do we really want to imitate the terrorists of this world and make a public spectacle of barbarically killing our adversaries?” Broglio asked.
Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 3 for a 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, that killed 13 people and injured more than 30. A court-martial convicted him and sentenced him to death in 2013. Hasan acknowledged at trial that he carried out the shooting, saying he had opened fire on fellow service members to protect Islamic insurgents from the U.S. military.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that the execution would be public “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” The Pentagon subsequently confirmed that it would be livestreamed, The Guardian reported. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to CBS News’ request for comment on Broglio’s statement.
Broglio, who said he presided over the funeral of Michael Grant Cahill, the only civilian killed in the Fort Hood attack, described Hasan’s crime as “heinous.” But he questioned what a broadcast would accomplish.
“The US military generally enjoys a good reputation in the world,” he wrote. “Is there really a value to throwing them in the same boat with terrorists by broadcasting the image of the execution of a man in a wheelchair to the whole world? Does this decision reflect the dignity of the human person?”
Three days before Broglio’s statement, Pope Leo XIV wrote on social media that the death penalty is “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” His post, published on the World Day Against the Death Penalty, did not explicitly mention Hasan’s planned execution.
The livestream plan has drawn objections from Republicans as well as Democrats. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said, “I would expect this from terrorists and dictators, but not here in America.” Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said the “death penalty is not entertainment.” Vice President JD Vance, who is Catholic, said he would not watch if the execution were livestreamed.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told CBS News that some House Republicans have concerns he intends to raise with the White House. He warned that footage could become “a recruiting tool for future terrorists” and said there was still time to consider the policy implications.
Hasan’s execution could be the U.S. military’s first execution of an American since 1961 and its first use of a firing squad since 1945. Publicly viewable executions are virtually unheard of in modern U.S. history, CBS News reported.
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