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The Trump administration is planning five more unprecedented federal executions before President-elect Joe Biden takes office, starting with a man who will be sentenced to death today for his role in a crime committed when he was 18 years old.
Brandon Bernard was convicted of his involvement in the 1999 murders of a religious couple from Iowa, whose bodies he burned in the trunk of his car.
He and four other teens kidnapped and robbed Todd and Stacie Bagley as they were leaving a Sunday service in Killeen, Texas.
Kim Kardashian speaks alongside Donald Trump during a 2019 criminal justice reform event
Bernard, now 40, would be the ninth federal prisoner to be executed since July, when Donald trump ended a 17-year hiatus in federal executions.
If he receives a lethal injection as planned at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, it would be a rare execution of a person who was a teenager when the crime occurred.
Federal executions during a presidential transfer of power are also rare, especially during a transition from a supporter of the death penalty to a president-elect like Biden opposed to capital punishment.
The last time executions were carried out during a period of failure was during Grover Cleveland’s presidency in the 1890s.
Defense attorneys have argued in court and in a Trump clemency petition that Bernard was a low-ranking subordinate member of the group.
They say both Bagleys were likely killed before Bernard doused their car with lighter fluid and set it on fire, a claim that conflicts with government testimony at trial.
Bernard, they add, has repeatedly expressed remorse.
“I can’t imagine how they feel about losing their family,” Bernard said of Bagley’s surviving relatives in a 2016 video statement from death row.
“I wish we could all go back and change it.”
She also described participating in youth outreach programs and embracing religion, adding, “I’ve tried to be a better person since that day.”
The case has prompted calls for Trump to intervene, including from a prosecutor at his 2000 trial.
That prosecutor now says that racial bias may have influenced the almost all-white jury’s decision to order a death sentence against Bernard, who is black.
Since then, several jurors have publicly said they regret not opting for life in prison.
And reality star Kim kardashian west is among those who have asked Trump to stop the execution, saying in a series of recent tweets that Bernard’s “role was minor compared to that of the other teens involved.”
The Justice Department has refused to delay Thursday’s execution of Bernard, another inmate on Friday, and three more in January, despite eight officials who participated in an execution last month tested positive for the coronavirus.
The eight federal executions in 2020 are already more than in the previous 56 years combined. Federal executions are those ordered by the United States government for federal crimes, as opposed to those carried out by individual states.
One of Bernard’s co-defendants, Christopher Vialva, was sentenced to death in September.
Todd Bagley’s mother, Georgia, issued a statement after that execution, saying, “I believe that when someone deliberately takes the life of another, they suffer the consequences of their actions.”
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