Fort Hood shooter's firing squad could usher in new era of executions across US, expert says
The planned firing squad execution of the Fort Hood mass shooter Nidal Malik Hasan could clear the road for more executions by gunfire across the United States, according to a leading death penalty expert, who says the method could gain traction if the military's upcoming execution goes smoothly.
"I think it's highly likely that if firing squad is successful here and successful in quotes because we still don't always know what a person is going through, but let's say it's a very quick execution, that it seems conceivable that it would be used on other inmates as well," Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno, a leading expert on capital punishment, told Fox News Digital.
In recent years, Idaho, Utah and South Carolina have been among the states to embrace the firing squad as a potential means of execution as lethal injections fall out of favor.
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The Trump administration announced earlier this week that Hasan will be executed by firing squad. He had been sentenced to death in 2013 after a 2009 mass shooting at the Army base killed 13 people and wounded 32 others.
The Pentagon confirmed to Fox News Digital on Thursday that authorities plan to livestream the sentence when it's carried out on Dec. 3.
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"The firing squad is considered to be more certain," Denno explained. "It's considered to be quicker, and it's also considered to be the, what I call the least inhumane method of execution."
Condemned prisoners who face the firing squad are believed to suffer less pain than those who receive lethal injections or other methods of capital punishment, she said.
People with excellent aim are also more abundant and better trained than executioners in other methods, she said.
"We have an endless supply of people who are experts in shooting, either professionally, because they're a police officer, corrections officer, or something like that," she said. "But we also have people are who are excellent, superb markspeople too, because that's a hobby or whatever. So this is, it's not difficult finding somebody who's willing to do this."
According to the Army, the last U.S. military execution was that of Pvt. John A. Bennett on April 13, 1961, at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. He was hanged after being convicted of rape and attempted murder.
Previously, Denno has said that the firing squad is the most humane and effective means of execution, with relatively few hiccups throughout American history.
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In recent years, the firing squad has returned to favor in some states that still use capital punishment over concerns including the limited availability of lethal injection drugs and their reliability.
Last week, a death row inmate in Tennessee survived two doses of pentobarbital — becoming the first person in the modern era to survive a lethal injection attempt and raising new questions about whether they should remain a viable means of execution.
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Christa Pike, 50, is recovering after the injections failed to kill her last week. She had been sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.
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Firing squads have had far fewer controversies throughout American history, Denno said. Until recently, there had only been two incidents — in 1877 and again in 1951.
"Of course there haven't been that many firing squad executions, but otherwise, given everything about the firing squad, these shooters should not be missing their target," she said.
That was until last year, when questions arose surrounding the South Carolina execution of 42-year-old double murderer Mikal Mahdi, she said.
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Mahdi killed two people in 2004. They were a store clerk named Christopher Boggs, whom Mahdi shot in the head while he was checking his ID, and off-duty officer James Myers, who was shot eight times and burned outside his own home.
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The death row inmate had the option to choose lethal injection, electric chair or firing squad, and took the latter.
But after his execution, his lawyers raised concerns that none of the three bullets fired struck him in the heart as intended, prompting concerns that the cop-killer had been retaliated against.
"The shooters missed the intended target area and the evidence indicates that he was struck by only two bullets, not the prescribed three," said Dr. Jonathan Arden, a forensic pathologist hired by Mahdi's defense. "Consequently, the nature of the internal injuries from the gunshot wounds resulted in a more prolonged death process."
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The executioners in Mahdi's case have not been publicly identified, but Denno said that they were presumably experienced shooters.
"This seems to be a really troublesome outcome, so it's just something to pay attention to on December 3," she said.
Fox News' Jasmine Baehr and Elizabeth Pritchett contributed to this report.