Terre Hat, Ind. – A 16-year-old Texas woman convicted of kidnapping and raping her before saving her from gasoline and burying her alive was sentenced to death Thursday, the eighth federal prisoner to die this year after a nearly two-decade hiatus.
Lando was pronounced dead at 11:47 p.m. In his final words, Hall invited others to Islam, who supported him and sought his reassurance, thanking him, “I am fine.” After reading a statement describing his crimes, Hall took one last chance to see his supporters and say: “Take care of yourself. Tell my kids I love them. ”
Following the execution late last night, the Supreme Court rejected last-minute legal challenges from Hall’s attorneys, who argued that racial bias played a role in his sentencing and also raised concerns about enforcement protocols and other constitutional issues.
While the drug was being administered, he lifted his head, lifted his head, soon appeared to be wearing a bandage, and bent his legs. He found himself rumbling and twice he opened his mouth, as if he were burning. Each time taking a short, mostly diligent breath. He then stopped breathing and immediately, an officer with a steel ope scope came into the execution chamber to check his heartbeat before he was officially declared dead.
Only three federal prisoners were executed in the previous 56 years, before federal executions began this year by the Trump administration. The other two executions are scheduled for later this year – although a judge on Thursday said none of them could be carried out before the end of the year – and the president-elect will assume power if Biden does not say the federal executions will continue.
Hall was one of five men convicted of abducting and killing Lisa Renee in 1994.
Federal court documents say Hall was a marijuana smuggler from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, who sometimes bought his drugs in the Dallas area. He arrived in Dallas on September 24, 1994, met two men in a car wash and gave them 4,700, expecting to return later with marijuana. The two men were Ren’s brothers.
Instead, the individuals claimed their car and stole money in the robbery. Hall and his colleagues thought they were lying and were able to find the address of the brothers’ apartment in Arlington, Texas.
When Hall and three other men arrived at the apartment, the brothers were not there. Lisa Rene was home alone.
“She was studying for a test and had her textbooks on the bed when her men knocked on the front door,” said John Arlington Detective John Stanton Siner, a retired Arlington detective.
In a statement released by prison officials, her older sister Pearl Ren said the execution “marks the end of a very long and painful chapter in our lives.”
“My family and I are very relieved that this is over. We have been dealing with this for 26 years and now we have to revive the nightmare that our darling Lisa had, ”he said. “Ending this painful process will be a major goal for our family. This is just the end after the legal result. The pain we endure with the implementation of Land Orlando Hall will never stop. ”
Court records give a chilling account of the terror facing his sister.
“They are trying to break down my door! Soon! “The victim told 911 dispatch. A confused scream was heard a few moments later, one person said,” Who are you on the phone with? “
Stanton said the men broke the sliding glass door to get inside and immediately took off with Renee. Police arrived within minutes, but the men and Renee were already gone, Stanton said, still triumphant on his near-miss to thwart the crime.
“It was one I will never forget,” Stanton said. “This one was particularly disgusting.”
The men went to a motel in Pine Bluff. Renee was repeatedly sexually assaulted during the drive and over the next two days at the motel.
On September 26, Hall and two other men took Renને to the Byrd Lake Natural Area in Pine Bluff, his eyes covered with a mask. They led her to a cemetery they had dug the day before. Hole put the sheet on Renee’s head and then hit her in the head with a shovel. When she ran another man and Hall hit her with a stone and she was dragged to the grave, where she was drowned in gasoline before dirt fell on her.
A coroner determined that Ren was still alive when she was buried and suffocated in the grave, where she was found eight days later.
Crossing the Texas-Arkansas line made the case a federal offense. Bruce Webster, a colleague of Hall’s, was also sentenced to death but the sentence was dropped last year because he is intellectually disabled. Three others, including Hall’s brother, received lesser sentences for their cooperation during the trial.
Hall’s lawyers argue that the judges who recommended the death penalty were not told of the serious trauma he experienced as a child or that he once jumped from a balcony into a motel pool and saved his 3-year-old nephew from drowning.
Donna Kiyog, 67, first met Hall 16 years ago when she and other volunteers from her Catholic Church, Terry Haute, created a program to provide Christmas presents to the children of inmates at the prison. They corresponded by email until the days before his death.
Kiyog said Hall had two sons, aged 28 and 27, and 13 grandchildren.
Hall became his own educated and eager reader, turning his life in prison, Kelly said. He did not understand the value of running it.
“My faith tells me that all life is precious and that life is in the line of death,” Keogh said. “I just don’t see any purpose.”
Hall’s lawyer, Marcy Weider, issued a statement after the execution: “Tonight, the federal government took the life of a man who repented of his role in Lisa Renee’s death and strived every day to be better. The world was not made a better place because of his death; Instead, our government’s ruthless desire to kill, and the devaluation of its hope and liberation, have all diminished. “
Five of the first six federal executions this year involved white men; The second was Navajo. Christopher Vialva, a black man, was arrested on Sept. 24 for the 1999 murder of an Iowa couple who visited Texas.
Critics have argued that the execution of white prisoners was the first political calculation in a nation embroiled in racist bias concerns involving the criminal justice system.
A September report from the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., said blacks overemphasized the death penalty, including the federal death penalty. The organization’s database shows that 55 federal death row inmates (46%) are black, while blacks make up about 13% of the U.S. population.
