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A convicted murderer died by lethal injection as President Donald Trump’s administration carries out a series of federal executions in its final days in power, ignoring clemency calls and Covid-19 outbreaks behind bars.
Brandon Bernard, a 40-year-old African American, was executed in a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, for his role in a 1999 double murder in Texas when he was 18 years old.
More than 500,000 people had signed petitions urging Trump to commute Bernard’s sentence to life in prison, citing his age at the time of the crime and his good behavior as a prisoner.
Among those who lent their support to Bernard was reality star Kim Kardashian.
“At 18 months, his brain was still developing,” Kardashian said.
“While Brandon was involved in this crime, his role was minor compared to the other teens involved, two of whom are now home from jail.”
Bernard and four other black teenagers were convicted of kidnapping youth ministers Todd and Stacie Bagley, a white couple from Iowa. They forced them to withdraw cash before finally shooting and burning them in their car.
Because the crime took place on a US military base, he was tried in federal court.
The shooter, Christopher Vialva, then 19, and Bernard, who set the car on fire, were sentenced to death in 2000.
“Brandon made a terrible mistake at age 18. But he did not kill anyone, and he never stopped feeling shame and deep remorse for his actions in the crime that claimed the lives of Todd and Stacie Bagley,” said his attorney Robert C. Owen in a statement after his death.
Vialva was executed by lethal injection in September, but other participants who were under 17 at the time avoided the death penalty.
Without a last minute respite, Bernard became the ninth federal inmate to be executed since July, when the Trump administration resumed federal executions after a 17-year hiatus.
Despite Trump’s defeat in the November 3 presidential election, which he has refused to admit, his administration plans to carry out more federal executions before he leaves office.
For 131 years, outgoing presidents traditionally suspended federal executions during the transition period.
The last federal execution is scheduled for January 15, just five days before Democrat Joe Biden takes office. Biden has vowed to end federal executions.
Before July, there had only been three federal executions in the last 45 years.
The Trump administration is “out of step with how the federal government has approached the death penalty in recent history,” said Ngozi Ndulue, director of research at the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
Ndulue said he also disagrees with public opinion on the death penalty.
Earlier yesterday, some 20 protesters against the death penalty gathered outside the Justice Department with signs that read “All life is precious” and chanted “execution is not the solution.”
“There is no reason to carry out these executions,” said Abraham Bonowitz, 53, director of Death Penalty Action. “We know that we can save ourselves from dangerous criminals and hold them accountable without executions.”
Ms Ndulue said it is “really surprising” that the government is “aggressively pursuing executions amid a global pandemic.”
In the midst of the health crisis, even states like Texas that carry out more executions have suspended them out of concern for prison staff, witnesses and victims’ families.
In the week following the last federal execution, carried out on November 19, six prison workers and the convict’s spiritual advisor tested positive for Covid-19.
Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, has rejected requests for a stay of federal executions, saying the government is obligated to carry out sentences imposed by the courts for “heinous” crimes.
Ms. Ndulue also pointed to racial disparities in the application of the death penalty in the United States.
Five of the first six federal prisoners executed since July were white. The other was a Native American.
However, the last two prisoners executed were black, as were four of the next five.
The other is a white woman, Lisa Montgomery. If her execution continues, she would be the first woman to be executed by the federal government since 1953.
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