A military jury has sentenced a former US Army psychiatrist to die by lethal injection for killing 13 soldiers and wounding 32 at a Texas Army base.
The Verdict:
Major Nidal Hasan, 42, was convicted last week for the November 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood.
Hasan served as his own attorney and his refusal to mount a vigorous defense, or to offer any mitigating evidence to blunt a capital sentence, may have made the panel's unanimous decision less complicated or agonizing.
The defendant had tried to admit his guilt but military law bans guilty pleas in death penalty cases.
The Rampage:
The Virginia-born Muslim said he opened fire to protect Taliban insurgents from troops about to deploy to Afghanistan.
In opening statements, he acknowledged to the jury that he pulled the trigger in a crowded waiting room where troops were getting final medical checkups before deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hasan opened fire in a medical facility on the Texas base, one of the largest in the United States, on November 5, 2009, just weeks before he was to be deployed to Afghanistan.
He said in his opening statement on August 6 that he was the gunman and had switched sides in what he considered to be a US war on Islam. An Army psychiatrist, he said nothing to the jury since then regarding his motives.
Witnesses testified Hasan, an American-born Muslim, screamed "Allahu akbar" ("God is greatest" in Arabic) as he sprayed gunfire with his laser-sighted handgun.
The same jurors who convicted Hasan last week had just two options: either agree unanimously that Hasan should die or watch the 42-year-old get an automatic sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole.
The Execution:
Hasan could become the first American soldier executed in more than half a century. The military justice system requires a lengthy appeals process, years or even decades could pass before he is put to death.
The lead prosecutor assured jurors that Hasan would "never be a martyr" despite his attempt to tie the attack to religion.
"He is a criminal. He is a cold-blooded murderer," Colonel Mike Mulligan said Wednesday in his final plea for a rare military death sentence. "This is not his gift to God. This is his debt to society. This is the cost of his murderous rampage."
For nearly four years, the federal government has sought to execute Hasan, believing that any sentence short of a lethal injection would deny justice to the families of the dead and the survivors who had believed they were safe behind the gates of the Texas base.
Hasan has seemed content to go to the death chamber for his beliefs. He fired his own attorneys to represent himself, barely put up a defense during a three-week trial and made almost no effort to have his life spared.
The Army psychiatrist will at some point be transferred to military death row in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to join five other condemned prisoners. The president of the United States would sign any death warrant, and the execution would take place at a federal correctional facility in Terre Haute, Indiana.
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, Kansas, where he will join five other inmates on military death row, officials said.
President George W. Bush signed a death warrant in 2008 for Ronald Gray, a former Army specialist convicted in the military system of several spree killings. His scheduled execution was put on hold, and the case remains under appeal.
Source:http://www.theguardian.com,http://www.foxnews.com,http://www.bbc.co.uk, Associated Press
Images:Getty Images
Feature Image:AP
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