USCCB president condemns Trump administration’s plan to livestream Fort Hood shooter’s execution as ‘barbaric’
Archbishop Paul Coakley asked for the intercession of Our Lady of Good Counsel after the Pentagon announced plans to publicly broadcast the execution of Nidal Hasan, which he said would undermine the nation’s moral fabric.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) President Archbishop Paul Coakley on Oct. 9 condemned the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan as a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death.”
The statement comes shortly after the War Department confirmed plans to livestream the execution of Hasan, the former Army major convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in the 2009 Fort Hood, Texas, shooting. Hasan, who described the attack as an act of jihad, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 3 at Fort Hood. A military jury convicted him in 2013 and sentenced him to death.
“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 Hasan,” Archbishop Coakley said in a statement. “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.”
He cited Romans 12:17 — “do not repay anyone evil for evil” — and added that a public execution “will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people.”
“I pray for the intercession of Our Lady of Good Counsel that we as a nation may always choose life even in the most trying times and circumstances,” Archbishop Coakley concluded.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an Oct. 8 interview that the execution would be public “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”
“He’s gonna get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be,” Hegseth said. “We’ll make sure that people are about to watch it.”
According to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, President Donald Trump approved Hasan’s execution by an Army firing squad on Hegseth’s recommendation. The approval came days after Tennessee’s botched lethal-injection execution of Christa Pike, who survived.
The U.S. military has not executed a prisoner since 1961 or used a firing squad for an execution since 1945, Fox News reported. Hasan is imprisoned on military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
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