Sherrill: Fort Hood Shooter Firing Squad 'Keeps Breaking My Heart'

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said the planned firing-squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan “just keeps breaking my heart” because young soldiers will be ordered to carry it out, according to a clip of her Friday appearance on MS NOW’s “The Weeknight” reported by Breitbart News.

“I think the thing, as I think about it, that just keeps breaking my heart, imagine the 20-year-old, imagine, maybe, the 18-year-old, that stepped up to serve, that gets orders and says, you’re going to go shoot this guy who’s in a wheelchair,” Sherrill said, according to Breitbart News.

NJ Gov. Mikie Sherrill on the execution of Nidal Hasan: "The thing that just keeps breaking my heart: imagine the 20-year-old, maybe the 18-year-old that stepped up to serve, that gets orders and says, you’re going to go shoot this guy who’s in a wheelchair." pic.twitter.com/6WdVnDjvTt

— Ezydu (@ezradulis) October 17, 2026

She continued, according to the outlet: “Imagine feeling like, I don’t know what to do here. And I think there are going to be people receiving these orders to the firing squad who are going to, for the rest of their lives now, have to carry that burden.”

The Democratic governor, a Navy veteran, went on to reject the execution plan as a spectacle. Sherrill said, according to Breitbart News: “Now, I believe in justice. I’m a former federal prosecutor. This is not justice. This is about trying to create some pageantry around something that should never be treated like that, that is disrespectful to soldiers, and that is incredibly offensive to most of us who’ve served.”

Breitbart News reported that Sherrill was discussing the now-canceled plans to publicly stream the execution.

Her earlier statement blamed Hegseth

The TV remarks followed a written statement Sherrill’s office released Thursday, Oct. 15, on what it called “Hegseth’s plan to publicly execute Nidal Hasan,” according to the New Jersey governor’s website.

“Nidal Hasan killed 13 innocent soldiers and deserves to be brought to justice,” Sherrill said in that statement. “But a televised public spectacle of an execution is contrary to the values that this nation stands for and that I took oaths to protect.”

In the same statement, Sherrill said one part of the plan “keeps me up at night: the horror of detailing soldiers to be in the firing squad.” She wrote that “our military hasn’t used one in over 80 years.”

The statement also took direct aim at the president and the secretary. Sherrill wrote that it “infuriates” her that the United States would sanction a military firing squad “in an ode to Trump and Hegseth’s warped view of toughness,” and she said soldiers “will be scarred for life if this goes forward — for no other reason beyond Pete Hegseth’s vanity,” according to the governor’s website.

The “wheelchair” line draws fire

A clip of Sherrill’s MS NOW comments circulated on X on Saturday. Attention quickly centered on her description of Hasan as “this guy who’s in a wheelchair,” a phrase Breitbart News used in its headline on the segment.

Sherrill herself acknowledged the scale of Hasan’s crime in her written statement, noting that he “killed 13 innocent soldiers.” In the MS NOW clip, by contrast, Sherrill’s concern is directed at the young soldiers who would carry out the sentence, while she refers to Hasan as “this guy who’s in a wheelchair,” according to Breitbart News.

Sherrill’s position, as laid out in both the statement and the interview, is that Hasan deserves justice but that the method and the attention around it put an unfair burden on the young service members who would be ordered to take part.

Sherrill made the case on the basis of her own service, according to her statement, which said she thinks about “my own kids serving in the military” when she imagines a young service member being assigned to the squad.

Sources

• @ezradulis on X (video)
• Breitbart News
• Office of the Governor of New Jersey

Reporting by Daily Beltway.