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Nidal Hasan sentenced to death for Fort Hood shooting rampage

By Billy Kenber August 28, 2013
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was sentenced to death Wednesday for
killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in a 2009 shooting
rampage at Fort Hood, Tex., the worst mass murder at a military
installation in U.S. history.

Dressed in Army fatigues, Hasan, who turns 43 next month,
listened impassively as the death sentence was handed down by a
panel of 13 senior military officers in a unanimous decision
after less than two hours of deliberations. If even a single
panel member had objected, Hasan would instead have been
sentenced to life in prison. He also was stripped of pay and
other financial benefits, which he continued to receive while in
custody.

No active-duty service member has been executed since 1961, and
legal experts said it will probably be many years, if ever,
before the sentence will be carried out. Hasan will be flown
shortly to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he will join five other
inmates on military death row, officials said.

In military cases, there are several mandatory appeal stages and
a military death sentence requires final approval by the
president, as commander in chief.

Despite the expected delays, survivors of the shooting welcomed
the verdict. According to news reports, Kathy Platoni, an Army
reservist, said: “From the bottom of my heart — he doesn’t
deserve to live. I don’t know how long it takes for a death
sentence to be carried out, but the world will be a better place
without him.”

Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was found guilty this month on
13?counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted
premeditated murder after opening fire Nov. 5, 2009, at Fort
Hood’s Soldier Readiness Processing Center, where troops were
getting medical checkups before deploying to Afghanistan.

Hasan, who was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan a few weeks
later, shouted “Allahu ­akbar!” meaning “God is great,” before
targeting soldiers with a high-powered, high-capacity handgun he
had fitted with laser sights. He was apprehended by military
police officers after firing more than 200 shots.

Prosecutors aggressively pursued the death sentence during the
22-day court-martial this month, calling more than 100
witnesses, including 20 victims and relatives of the deceased to
testify in a courtroom just a few miles from the site of the
shooting.

During two days of evidence ahead of his sentencing, they
described, in often emotional testimony, their grief and
suffering.

Staff Sgt. Patrick Zeigler, who was shot four times and had more
than 20 percent of his brain removed in surgery, told the court,
“I was expected to either die or remain in a vegetative state.”
He said that his personality has changed and that he is “a lot
angrier, a lot darker than I used to be.”

The father of a pregnant 21-year-old private from Chicago,
Francheska Velez, who was fatally shot as she pleaded for the
life of her baby, testified in Spanish that Hasan had “killed me
slowly.” Velez was one of three women killed in the shooting.

The court heard that Hasan had carefully planned his attack,
training at a local firing range and researching jihad on his
computer. The FBI and Defense Department have drawn criticism
for failing to prevent the attack after missing a number of
warning signs.

Hasan, an American-born Muslim, had exchanged e-mails with a
leading al-Qaeda figure in which he asked whether those
attacking fellow soldiers were martyrs. The e-mails were seen by
the FBI. Hasan also once gave a presentation to Army doctors
discussing Islam and suicide bombers and said Muslims should be
allowed to leave the armed forces as conscientious objectors to
avoid “adverse events.”

The psychiatrist, who acted as his own attorney, tried to plead
guilty before the start of the trial but was unable to do so
under military rules governing death penalty cases.

He called no witnesses, offered no testimony and declined to
make any statements beyond a brief opening comment in which he
took responsibility for the shooting and said he was a soldier
who had decided to “switch sides” in what he believed was a U.S.
war against Islam.

As a result, he faced accusations that he deliberately sought
the death sentence.

But in a phone interview Wednesday, his former attorney denied
that Hasan, who is paralyzed from the chest down and uses a
wheelchair after being shot by military officers, had a death
wish.

John P. Galligan, a civilian lawyer who regularly visits Hasan
in jail, said his former client was denied the opportunity to
defend himself when the judge barred him from arguing that he
had carried out the mass shooting to save the lives of Taliban
leaders in Afghanistan.

Galligan, who continues to provide legal assistance, denounced
the proceedings as “almost a ludicrous show trial to secure a
death penalty, even though they know it’s unlikely that it would
be ever actually implemented.”

Galligan said the appeals would probably “go on for decades.”

“In all honesty, he stands a far more likely chance of dying
from medical reasons than dying because he’s been sentenced to
death,” he said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nidal- hasan-sentenced-to-death-for-fort-hood-shooting- rampage/2013/08/28/aad28de2-0ffa-11e3-bdf6- e4fc677d94a1_story.html?utm_term=.87b6564be01f
 

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