On November 5, 2009, Major Nidal Hasan walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Texas, and opened fire on unarmed American soldiers. He killed 13 people. He wounded 32 more. The youngest victims were there for routine medical checkups before deployment.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill thinks you should feel sorry for him.
Appearing on MSNBC NOW's "The Weeknight," Sherrill went after the scheduled firing-squad execution with a line so perfectly tone-deaf it deserves to be framed: "Imagine the 20 year old, maybe the 18 year old that stepped up to serve, that gets orders and says, you're going to go shoot this guy who's in a wheelchair."
A guy in a wheelchair. That's the framing. Not "a man convicted on all 42 counts of premeditated murder and attempted murder." Not "a jihadist who shouted 'Allahu Akbar' before massacring his fellow soldiers." A guy in a wheelchair.
Sherrill called the execution "not justice." She wants you to picture a young soldier burdened by the awful task of carrying out a lawful sentence on a mass murderer — as if the real victims here are the ones pulling the trigger, not the 13 who went to work on a Tuesday and never came home.
Here's what she left out of that heart-wrenching hypothetical. Nidal Hasan is in a wheelchair because he was shot by law enforcement while he was actively killing people. He didn't trip on a curb. He wasn't born with a disability. He caught bullets in the middle of a massacre he started. The wheelchair is a consequence of his own rampage — and the only reason he's alive to sit in it is because the officers who stopped him showed more restraint than he showed anyone in that processing center.
Hasan was found guilty in 2013 on all 42 counts. He offered no defense. He wanted to die as a martyr. The Supreme Court denied his review in March 2025. Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle has scheduled the execution for December 3 at 1 p.m. Central, by firing squad — the method required when lethal injection isn't available at a military facility.
The legal process took 17 years. Hasan exhausted every appeal. The military court system — not exactly known for rushing to judgment — confirmed the sentence at every level. This isn't some railroaded defendant sitting on shaky evidence. This is one of the most thoroughly adjudicated capital cases in American military history.
Sherrill's concern about young soldiers being "ordered" to participate in an execution assumes the military drags unwilling kids into the room at gunpoint. It doesn't. Execution details are composed of volunteers. Army veteran Ellis Reyes made the point better than any rebuttal could: "Why is Nidal Hasan in a wheelchair? Ahhh, killing Americans on a military base. As a 20 year old Army Ranger, I would have volunteered for that detail."
What Sherrill never mentioned — not once — were the 13 names. Not the soldiers who bled out on a medical-center floor. Not the 32 who survived with wounds they'll carry for life. Not the families who spent nearly two decades watching the legal system grind through appeals while the man who destroyed their lives sat in a cell at taxpayer expense. Her entire frame was built around the killer's comfort and the executioner's feelings.
The execution is scheduled for December 3. Hasan will face a firing squad at Fort Hood. Thirteen families have been waiting 17 years for that date.
