Brandon Bernard executed in America – VG

Bernard, 40, was sentenced to death in 2000 for aiding and inciting the murder of a Texas couple the previous year, when he was 18 years old.

After more than 20 years in prison, he was executed Friday night in the state of Indiana, reports the Reuters news agency.

It happened after an intense battle by his defenders and supporters to stop the execution. The case was heard by the United States Supreme Court in the hours after the poison injection was given, after star attorneys Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr became part of Bernard’s legal team.

Read also: Kim Kardashian asks Trump to revoke death penalty

But around 8:30 p.m. local time, the refusal came from the Supreme Court, and an hour later, at 9:27 p.m., he was pronounced dead, writes the Washington Post.

“Tonight we are the ones who love Brandon, and there are many of us, filled with righteous anger and deep pain that the authorities are taking his life,” defense attorney Robert C. Owen wrote in a statement: and calls the execution a “blemish on the US legal system.”

– incomparable

Bernard is the ninth person to have been executed in the United States so far in 2020. Four more executions are planned before Joe Biden takes office, the next one already on Friday.

If this goes according to plan, a total of 13 prisoners will have been executed during the Trump presidency.

Between 2003 and 2020, no federal executions were carried out in the United States, and this is the first time in 131 years that executions have been carried out during a transitional period between two presidents, NTB writes.

“This appetite for killing prisoners is unparalleled in US presidential history,” Robert Dunham, who heads the Death Penalty Information Center, told NBC, referring to the executions between the presidential election and Biden’s inauguration. January 20.

The US Department of Justice has defended the plans and has said, according to the Washington Post, that Attorney General William Barr follows the law when ensuring that death sentences are served.

Kim Kardashian asked Trump for help

Among those involved in Bernard’s case is superstar Kim Kardashian West. On Wednesday, he asked President Donald Trump to revoke the death penalty, to no avail.

– I just spoke to Brandon for what is probably the last time. The most difficult conversation I have ever had. Brandon, selfless as ever, focused on his family, wrote on Twitter Thursday night.

The three liberal judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan, affirm in a statement that they wanted to stop or postpone the execution. However, they were a minority in court of a total of nine people.

In a statement, Sotomayor refers to the arguments of Bernard’s defenders that he should have been sentenced to death on the basis of, among other things, false testimony. They have also claimed that the prosecution deliberately misled the jury and withheld evidence.

Bernard has never had a chance to have these accusations proven in court. Now he will never succeed either, he writes.

He committed the crime when he was 18 years old.

Bernard was found guilty of murder after he, when he was 18, kidnapped the couple Todd and Stacie Bagley along with his friend Christopher Vialva. They drove with the couple in the trunk for several hours before ending up at a military camp where the couple was killed.

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Vialva was considered a leading man in court, who concluded that he was both the driving force behind the incidents and the one who fired the fatal shots. Later, Bernard started the car where the victims lay and started it. The autopsy showed that Stacie was still alive when she was set on fire and died of smoke wounds.

Both Bernard and Vialva were sentenced to death and Vialva was executed in the Terre Haute death chamber on 24 September this year.

Bernard’s lawyers have argued that he was very young when the crime was committed and that he should not have played a lesser role than his partner. They have also pointed out that he must have behaved very well in prison.

According to the AP news agency, Bernard used his last words to say “I’m sorry” before he was executed Friday night.

“It’s the only word I can say that contains what I feel today and what I felt that day,” he said as he looked towards the room where the witnesses to the execution were staying.

In a statement released by the federal prison service, family and friends of those killed in Todd and Stacie Bagley said the couple’s murders were a “senseless act of unnecessary malice.” They also thank President Trump and Attorney General William Barr, writes the Washington Post.

– We have been mourning for 21 years while we waited for justice to finally prevail, they write more.

– He has been incredibly strong and brave

Johanne Hagen (31) from Sarpsborg previously told VG + about her fight to stop Brandon’s execution, and about her contact with him while on death row.

– Brandon has been incredibly strong and courageous through this, to the end. We have laughed together every day and choose to look at ourselves as active participants in the search for meaning in a tragedy. And we have been, and still are, he wrote in an email to VG on Thursday, before the execution was completed.

We, as in family, defenders and friends and closest, have tried to hit each other with a meat ax since we got the appointment. Death row is an antiquated system, a human abyss. But even in the abyss, we have managed to find hope and joy in every little day. We have lived all we could, we have done all we could, and we friends have lived as little lawyers in our respective countries, we have fought all over the world, driven by our love for you Brandon, continues .