LIMA, Ohio – Vice President JD Vance on Friday questioned whether the Pentagon will go ahead with plans to livestream the December execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan. He also said that, if the execution is broadcast, he will not watch it.
Asked about the plans confirmed by the Pentagon a day earlier, Vance said, “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen.” He sought to move the focus away from the controversy surrounding a public execution, while stressing that Hasan’s crimes must not be forgotten.
Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others during a 2009 shooting spree at the military base.
“So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don’t forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people,” Vance said.
He added, “Now, that said, I mean, look, if it’s ultimately livestreamed, I’m not going to be watching it.”
Vance converted to Catholicism, a faith whose church has long opposed the death penalty.
Earlier Friday, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops denounced the federal government’s decision to livestream Hasan’s execution.
“It is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War’s decision to publicly livestream the execution of Nidal Hassan. Our God is the God of life. In no way can Hassan’s actions be condoned but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered,” Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, the conference’s president, said in a statement.
President Donald Trump earlier told attendees at a White House event that Hasan would receive “the death penalty through firing squad. And he deserves it.”
Trump, who approved the execution, referred to Hasan as “a maniac.”
The president authorized execution by firing squad days after a failed lethal-injection attempt involving Christa Pike late last month led Tennessee’s governor to suspend additional executions in the state for the rest of the year.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military has not carried out an execution by firing squad since World War II. The most recent military execution occurred April 13, 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was hanged.
Trump, a longtime and outspoken supporter of capital punishment, did not address the Pentagon’s announcement that the execution could be livestreamed for the public.
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This story was corrected to identify the military base as Fort Hood, not Ford Hood.
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Associated Press writers Will Weissert in Washington and Holly Meyer in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.
