Trump orders firing squad execution days after Christa Pike's botched lethal injection

Trump orders firing squad execution days after Christa Pike's botched lethal injection Donald Trump has authorised the execution by firing squad of Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people and injured another 30 in a shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas Donald Trump has authorised an execution by firing squad just days after the botched execution of Christa Pike, who survived two lethal injections. The US President has approved a firing squad execution for Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who carried out a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote in a post on X following Trump's approval: “Judgement day for Hasan has finally come.” The US military has not carried out the death penalty since 1961. The Army secretary will decide a time and place for the execution, Parnell said. Army psychiatrist Hasan walked into a medical building where soldiers were getting medical checkups and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun. He killed 13 people and injured another 30 in his shooting spree. During his trial he described himself as a soldier who had “switched sides,” carrying out the attack in an effort to stop the soldiers from going to Afghanistan to fight in the US war on terror. An article published in May in the magazine Army Lawyer details how, despite Trump’s approval, Hasan could delay his execution - potentially for years - with a habeas corpus appeal in the civilian federal court system. Death sentences are extremely rare in the US military justice system and executions are even rarer. Four men, including Hasan, are currently on the military’s death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas - the US military’s only maximum-security prison. President George W. Bush approved the execution of Army Spc. Ronald Gray in 2008 but it was put on hold by a judge and he remains at Leavenworth. The last man executed in the military system was Pvt. John Bennett, hanged in 1961 for raping an 11-year-old girl. Trump approved the firing squad execution days after a failed attempt to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection pushed Tennessee’s governor to halt further executions this year and order an independent review. Trump resumed the federal death penalty after an informal moratorium during previous administrations. The federal government executed 13 people between 2020 and early 2021, making Trump the most prolific execution president in more than 130 years. Asked whether the botched execution in Tennessee would lead him to seek changes to capital punishment, Trump said it was “an interesting situation.” “It shouldn’t be very difficult,” Trump said of carrying out lethal injections. Pike, 50, was administered with two lethal injections in Tennessee’s death chamber but somehow survived. She was rushed to hospital shortly after and remains in a critical condition. She would have been the first woman the state put to death in 200 years.