On Wednesday, army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan was sentenced to death for the 2009 the Fort Hood shooting rampage that killed 13 people. Â
What comes next is the start of a lengthy appeals process that could ultimately test the military’s historic relationship with the death penalty.
If Hasan is put to death, he would become the first military service member to be executed since 1961. Â
Geoffrey S. Corn, a former Army prosecutor and defense lawyer, and a professor at the South Texas College of Law, looks at why there have been no military executions in the last 50 years–and whether Hasan’s case could change history.
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