Nidal Hasan Will Die on Livestream, December 3 at Fort Hood, Russell Brand's Trial Opens in London, Christa Pike Back on Death Row

0:03 Calaroga Shark Media. Good morning. This is Daily Crime and Justice from Calaroga Media, powered by AI. I'm Garrett Fisher. It's Tuesday, October 13th, 2026. On December 3rd at 1 o'clock in the afternoon at Fort Hood, Texas, an army firing squad is scheduled to execute Nadal Hassan, the man who killed 13 people on that same post in 2009. And the Pentagon says you will be able to watch it live online. The United States hasn't held a public execution in about 90 years. So today's question is a simple one to ask and a hard one to answer. Should the public be allowed to watch the government take a life? Let's get into it.

0:53 Last week, we told you the president had approved death by firing squad for Nidal Hassan and that the army would set a time and place. It has. If you're new to this story, here is the short version. On November 5th, 2009, Hassan, an army major and psychiatrist, walked into a soldier processing center at Fort Hood and opened fire on soldiers getting ready to deploy. 13 people were killed. 32 more were wounded. Hassan was shot by police and has been paralyzed ever since. In 2013, he represented himself at his court-martial, told the jury the evidence would show he was the shooter, offered almost no defense, and was sentenced to death. He said he did it to stop American soldiers from going to Afghanistan. Under military law, a death sentence moves through a chain. The army secretary starts the process, the defense secretary recommends, and only the president can give final approval. Hassan is one of four men on the Army's death row. No one in that system has been executed since 1961. On Tuesday, October 6th, Acting Army Secretary Adam Telly announced the execution will take place at Fort Hood on Thursday, December 3rd at 1 p.m.

2:06 Central Time. The officer in charge will be the commandant of the Army's prison at Fort Leavenworth, where Hassan has been held on death row. CBS News Texas points out a detail that I don't think is an accident. 1 p.m. Is about the same time of day that the shooting began, on November 5th, 2009. Then, on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the conservative network Real America's Voice that people would be able to watch the execution. On Thursday, Pentagon officials confirmed to the Associated Press that it would be livestreamed, with more details to come. Let me give you the history, because this is genuinely new territory. Public executions were once common in this country. But by the 1930s, states had moved them behind prison walls. The most infamous of the last public executions was in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1936, when thousands of people crowded around a gallows. The spectacle was so widely condemned that it helped end the practice. Since then, executions in the United States have been witnessed by a small number of people, officials, lawyers, journalists, sometimes the families of victims, sometimes the condemned person's own family. There has been one significant exception. In 2001, when Timothy McVeigh was executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, the federal government allowed a closed-circuit video feed to be shown to survivors and victims' families in Oklahoma City. But it was a private feed for the people he had harmed. It was never

3:37 shown to the public. What the Pentagon is describing would go much further. It's also not clear how it would work. The Pentagon hasn't said where the stream would be hosted, who would control it, or what viewers would actually see. CBS News has already raised the question of whether major social media platforms would even allow it on their services, given their own rules about violent content. Those are not small details. They're the whole question. The reaction has been fast, and it has not broken down along party lines. Democrats have been overwhelmingly opposed. Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned that a live stream could give Hassan exactly the attention he wanted. But Republicans have objected too. Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina said Hassan should face the death penalty, but called live streaming it beyond disgusting. Senator Lisa Murkowski said there's no need to live stream any execution. Georgia Congressman Austin Scott said he supports the death penalty, but objects to broadcasting it. Catholic leaders have objected, and the United Nations Human Rights Office has condemned the plan. In Texas, the Texas Defender Service, which represents people facing the death penalty, called the plan unconscionable. And reaction among Texans, according to the Houston Chronicle, has been sharply divided, with some calling it political theater and others saying Hassan has waited long

5:08 enough for the punishment a jury gave him 13 years ago. Vice President J.D. Vance asked about it on Friday, said, quote, I don't know that that's actually going to happen and that if it does, he won't be watching. The president's own comments have been less clear. On Friday, he said Hassan will be executed by firing squad and that the administration was making a determination about the live stream. Since then, he has said he approves and that the final decision will be his. There's also a legal question, Army Regulation 190-55, which governs military executions, limits who may witness one, and says explicitly that no one under 18 may attend. It doesn't mention live streaming at all. Senator Reid has said the president would need to approve a waiver to make the execution public. And Eugene Fidel, a military law expert at Yale, told the Associated Press that while Hassan himself could challenge his execution in federal court, He doesn't see many legal paths to stopping a live stream. And one more point of caution. A presidential approval is not the same as an execution. In 2008, President George W. Bush approved the execution of another soldier, Ronald Gray, and a federal judge stopped it. Hassan's attorney has also raised concerns about how he was notified, saying the commandant brought a chaplain but no lawyer.

6:34 As always on this show, dates move. Now, I want to give you both sides of this fairly, because there are real arguments on each one. Here's the case for letting the public watch. If the government is going to kill someone in our name, the argument goes, we should have to see what that means. Executions have been carried out behind closed doors for 90 years, and you saw two weeks ago in Tennessee, what can happen in that secrecy? A procedure that went wrong for hours and almost no public record of it. Transparency is accountability. Some supporters also argue that a public execution of a man who murdered 13 people on an army post sends a message about justice. One survivor of the attack, Dana Ferguson, who was wounded that day, told ABC News that a public execution follows a historical tradition. And the Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress has publicly backed the livestream.

7:34 Here's the case against. Opponents say an execution is not entertainment, and that putting it on the internet, where no one checks anyone's age, turns it into content. They point out that Hassan has said in the past that he wanted to be seen as a martyr, and that a global broadcast could hand him the platform he was looking for when he opened fire. Critics also worry about what it does to the families who lost people that day, who would have no control over where those images end up. And some, including a former military lawyer quoted by KCEN in Texas, doubt the live stream will ever actually happen. Perhaps the most powerful voice in all of this belongs to Alonzo Lunsford. He was a sergeant at Fort Hood in 2009. Hassan shot him seven times, including in the head. Lunsford told ABC News he plans to be there on December 3rd because he wants to, quote, lock eyes with Hassan. He also says he has forgiven him because his faith requires it, and he does not want the execution streamed to the world.

8:37 He believes it should be shown only to the survivors and to the families of the people who died. That's where I come down too. I've told you before that I don't argue about capital punishment itself on this show. But I do think the people who have the strongest claim to see this are the people he hurt, and McVeigh showed there's a way to do that without turning it into a broadcast. Transparency matters. Tennessee proved that. But transparency can mean independent witnesses, journalists in the room, recordings preserved for courts and investigators. It doesn't have to mean a stream anyone can click on. When the man who survived seven bullets says he wants to watch but doesn't want you to, I think that's worth listening to. You may see it differently, and I want to hear from you.

9:22 And whatever happens on December 3rd, it shouldn't erase the people this is actually about. Michael Grant Cahill, John Gaffaney, Juanita Warman, Libardo Eduardo Caraveo, Russell Seeger, Justin DeCrow, Frederick Green, Amy Kruger, Kam Xiong, Jason Hunt, Michael Pearson, Aaron Namelka, and Francesca Velez, and the baby she was carrying. Someone has to say their names. When we come back, Russell Brand's trial is underway in London. Russell Brand arrived at Southwark Crown Court in London on Monday morning for the start of his criminal trial. According to TV Insider, he wore a grey suit and sunglasses and his wife Laura was at his side. Brand, who is 51, faces seven charges, three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one count of indecent assault, involving six women between 1999 and 2009. He has pleaded not guilty to all of them, and he denies all of the allegations.

10:36 Monday was about choosing the jury. Opening statements from the prosecution are tentatively expected on Wednesday. The trial could run around 10 weeks. Brand remains on bail. A quick note on how we're covering this because some outlets are already getting it wrong. Several American stories this week have repeated allegations from the 2023 documentary that started this investigation, including claims that are not part of the criminal charges. While a British jury is hearing a case, publishing material like that can amount to contempt of court. So we will report on the seven charges and on what is said in that courtroom and nothing else. The women who brought these complaints have lifelong anonymity under British law, and we will never identify them. I'll have the opening statement for you as soon as it happens. And again, Russell Brand denies all charges. Our lead today was about an execution the government wants everyone to see. This one is about an execution that happened behind closed doors and went wrong. On Saturday, Krista Pike's attorneys announced that she had been discharged from the hospital and returned to the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, the women's prison where she has lived for more than 30 years, most of it on death row. It's 10 days after Tennessee gave her two full doses of pentobarbital and she survived.

12:01 Her lawyers say she has made what they call a remarkable physical recovery. She is walking with some help. Her arms, badly injured by the IV lines, are regaining movement and strength. Her lungs are clear, and she has started eating a regular diet. But they say she's having cognitive problems, and it could be months before anyone knows whether there's long-term damage. In their statement, they said she is grateful to the first responders and the medical team who saved her. Think about what that sentence means. Doctors and paramedics worked to save the life of a woman the state was trying to end, and the state paid for both. Her lawyers say she is the only person known to have survived a complete execution attempt in this country after actually receiving the drugs. There have been executions that were called off midway when teams couldn't find a vein. Those people went back to death row too, but none of them had the drugs in their system. None of them were declared to be dying and then woke up. There is simply no precedent for what Tennessee does next, and her lawyers are asking the governor to make sure she is never put through it again. Tennessee still hasn't said whether it will try to execute her again. A judge has ordered the state to preserve all the evidence from that night.

13:15 The independent review is underway, and Governor Bill Lee, who has the power to commute her sentence, hasn't said what he'll do. There's much more to this story than a news update can hold, which is why, on Thursday, we're doing something different. One full episode, the whole Krista Pike story from the night in January of 1995 when Colleen Slemmer was killed through 30 years on death row to the gurney to the hospital and back to the cell she just returned to. Colleen Slemmer was 19 years old. Someone has to say her name. That's the show for this Tuesday. Here's today's question for the Spotify crowd, and it's a big one. If the Hassan execution is live streamed, would you watch it? And either way, why? If you're listening on Spotify, drop a comment. I promise I'll read them.

14:19 If this episode made you stop and think, share it with someone you'd want to argue with about it. That's the best way this show grows. And Apple podcast listeners, there's a listen uninterrupted button at the top of your screen. $ 5 a month, no ads. This show plus thousands of other Calaroga Media shows, and the first 30 days are free. To everyone who already subscribes, thank you. Coming up, on Wednesday, the prosecution is expected to open its case against Russell Brand. On Thursday, the whole Krista Pike story. And Thursday afternoon, Brian Koberger's lawyers ask Judge Stephen Hippler to step aside. We'll have that for you Friday. I'm Garrett Fisher. Do better.

15:00 This episode of Daily Crime and Justice is produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and is intended for news and commentary purposes only. It is not legal advice. Everyone charged with a crime is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. Russell Brand has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denies all of the allegations against him. Nidal Hasan and Krista Pike have been convicted. On Nidal Hasan, details of the planned livestream come from Pentagon officials, as reported by the Associated Press, CBS News, and others. The Pentagon has not released full details, and the plan could change. Statements by the president about the livestream have varied, and reports differ on what he has approved. Statements by survivors are as reported by ABC News.

15:48 Historical references to public executions are general summaries. Accounts differ on which was the last public execution in the United States. No execution date is final until it is carried out, and legal challenges remain possible. On Russell Brand. Details of his arrival at court are as reported by TV Insider. Under the Sexual Offenses Amendment Act 1992, complainants in sexual offense cases in the United Kingdom are entitled to lifelong anonymity. On Krista Pike. Information about her condition comes from statements by her attorneys and may have changed. If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual violence, you can.

16:28 Call RAINN at 800-656-4673. In England and Wales, you can reach Rape Crisis at 0808 500 2222.