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A man who killed a religious couple visiting Texas from Iowa was executed Thursday, the first black prisoner to be executed as part of the Trump administration’s resumption of federal executions.
Christopher Vialva, 40, was pronounced dead shortly before 7 p.m. after receiving a lethal injection at federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
In a final statement, Vialva asked God to comfort the families of the couple he had murdered, saying: ‘Father … heal their hearts with grace and love.’ His last words were: I’m ready, father.
There was some confusion within the Bureau of Prisons about the official time of death. Inside the chamber, the time of death was announced at 6.42 p.m., but the agency later said that the official time of death was actually 6.46 p.m.
He was 19 years old in 1999 when he shot Todd and Stacie Bagley and burned them in the trunk of his car. Vialva’s attorney, Susan Otto, has said that race played a major role in sending her client to death row for murdering the white couple.
Vialva was the seventh federal execution since July and the second this week. Five of the first six were white, a move that critics argue was a political calculation to avoid the uproar. The sixth was Navajo.
This undated image taken from video provided by attorney Susan Otto shows Christopher Vialva at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. Vialva is the seventh person sentenced to federal death to be executed this year
Todd and Stacie Bagley, left and right, were killed by Christopher Andre Vialva
“I believe that when someone deliberately takes the life of another, they suffer the consequences of their actions,” wrote Todd Bagley’s mother, Georgia, in a statement issued after the execution.
In the video statement released by his lawyers on Thursday, Vialva expressed regret for what he had done and said he was a changed man.
“I made a grave mistake as a lost child and took two precious lives from this world,” he said. “Every day, I wish I could correct this mistake.”
Vialva’s mother, Lisa Brown, spoke at a demonstration against the death penalty Thursday morning outside the prison where her son was later executed.
“This is the first place I’ve had that I can tell Todd and Stacie’s family, I am so sorry for their loss,” said Brown, who was expected to witness the execution of his son.
“Christopher’s mother had the opportunity to visit him for the past 21 years,” he wrote. ‘We have had to wait 21 years for justice and closure. We cannot be with our children for visits or to see them on vacation. We were denied that privilege, ”Bagley’s mother wrote.
Federal authorities executed only three prisoners in the last 56 years. Enemies of the death penalty accuse President Donald Trump of restarting them to help claim as a candidate for law and order.
Otto said a black jury and 11 white juries recommended the death penalty in 2000 after prosecutors told them that Vialva led a black gang faction in Killeen, Texas, and that he murdered to improve his gang status. That claim, Otto said, was false and only served to evoke threatening stereotypes.
“ It fit the narrative perfectly that he was a dangerous black thug who killed these lovely white people. And they were lovely, ” Otto said in a recent phone interview.
According to court documents, the Bagleys were on their way home from a Sunday worship service during a visit to Texas when Vialva and her teenage accomplices asked them to take them after stopping at a convenience store, planning all along to rob the couple. . After the Bagleys agreed and began to walk away, Vialva pulled out a pistol and told the couple, “The plans have changed.”
A wave of federal executions by the Trump administration resumed after a 17-year hiatus
After stealing their money, jewelry and ATM card, the teens locked the Bagleys in the trunk of their car as they drove for hours trying to get money from ATMs and trying to pawn Stacie Bagley’s wedding ring. The Bagleys begged for their lives from the trunk.
The teens finally pulled to the side of the road and poured lighter fluid into the car. As they did so, the Bagleys sang “Jesus Loves Us” in the trunk. Vialva, the oldest of the group, donned a ski mask, opened the trunk and shot the Bagleys in the head. Stacie Bagley, prosecutors said at trial, was still alive when flames engulfed the car.
Questions about racial bias in the criminal justice system have been front and center since protests erupted across the country after George Floyd’s death after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee to his neck. of the black man handcuffed for several minutes.
A report this month from the Washington DC-based Death Penalty Information Center said that blacks continue to be overrepresented on death row and that blacks who kill whites are far more likely to be sentenced to death than blacks. whites who kill blacks.
Of the 56 inmates currently on federal death row, 26, or nearly 50%, are black, according to data from the center updated Wednesday; 22, or nearly 40%, are white and seven, about 12%, were Latino. There is an Asian on federal death row. Blacks make up only about 13% of the population.
Otto said Vialva’s attorneys during the trial, sentencing phase and in an initial appeal did not appear to raise objections about the racial makeup of the jury or Vialva’s characterization as the leader of a black gang. That effectively barred subsequent attorneys from raising the issue of racial bias on appeals to higher courts.
His current legal team, by contrast, emphasized Vialva’s level of mental development at the time of the murders. Otto said that Vialva was developmentally three or four years younger than his 19 years at the time of the killings, and therefore, for all practical purposes, he was a minor at the time.
Otto says that US law does not allow judges to consider someone facing a possible death sentence to be technically a minor and therefore ineligible for the death penalty, something she says should change.
