Brandon Bernard, the 40-year-old man sentenced to death was executed – Corriere.it

Brandon bernard He was pronounced dead at 9:27 p.m. in Indiana’s Terre Haute Jail, after the Supreme Court rejected the latest attempts to stop the lethal injection.. He was eighteen years old, in June 1999, when he and a gang of teenagers kidnapped and later murdered Todd and Stacie Bagley. At 40, the youngest inmate executed in nearly 70 years. And the ninth since July, when Attorney General William Barr introduced end of sixteen years of federal moratorium on executions. Four other death sentences are scheduled between now and January: the first time in 130 years that are scheduled in the interregnum between one presidency and another And if all four are executed, Trump will have been the US president who has presided over several executions in more than a century.

Bernard was one of five teenagers charged in the Bagley massacre. The gang robbed them both and put them in the trunk of their car, then 19-year-old Christopher Valva (executed in September) shot them both and ordered Brandon to set the car on fire.. Bernard’s defenders argued that the couple was already dead when Brandon set the fire (but the prosecution claims the woman was still alive) and demanded a life sentence instead of the death penalty. also in consideration of the behavior of the child, who studied in prison and dedicated himself to volunteering and awareness programs to keep young people away from gangs.

The campaign to save him

The same prosecutor who had proposed the death penalty said at the time that she was in favor of commuting the sentence., writing an editorial inIndianapolis Star: Having learned so much from 2000 to today about the maturation of the human brain and having watched Brandon grow into a humble and repentant adult who was absolutely capable of living peacefully in prisonHow can we say that he is part of that small group of criminals who must be sentenced to death? Five of the nine surviving jurors also asked Trump to commute his sentence. Dozens of politicians and stars, from Cory Booker to Kim Kardashian, came together to save his life. In vain.