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 â becoming the first person in the modern era to survive a lethal injection attempt and
