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A man convicted of kidnapping and raping a 16-year-old girl before dousing her with gasoline and burying her alive was executed in the United States.
Orlando Hall was the eighth person to be executed by the government this year since the Triumph The administration reinstated capital punishment at the federal level this summer, after a hiatus of nearly two decades.
He was pronounced dead at 11:47 pm local time (4.37am UK time) after receiving a lethal injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital at the Terre Haute federal prison complex. Indiana.
Hall was executed by lethal injection at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.
In his last words, the 49-year-old thanked those who supported him and sought to reassure them by saying, “I’m fine.”
After a statement recounting his crimes was read, Hall took one last opportunity to look at his followers and say, “Take care. Tell my children I love you.”
The nightly execution occurred after the Supreme Court denied last-minute legal challenges from Hall’s lawyers, who had argued that racial bias played a role in his sentencing and also raised concerns about execution protocol and other constitutional issues.
Hall was the second black man to be executed by lethal injection on federal death row in recent months.
It is unclear whether the federal executions will end after Donald Trump’s electoral defeat.
He was convicted by an all-white jury for his role in the 1994 kidnapping, murder and rape of 16-year-old Lisa Rene, the sister of two Texas drug dealers who Hall believed had stolen money from him.
The educational and advocacy fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which filed an amicus brief on Hall’s behalf, argued that there was evidence that prosecutors had not improperly included black people. on the jury for racial reasons.
Of the 56 people on federal death row, 26 are black (46%) and 22 people (39%) are white, even though African Americans make up only 13% of the American population.
Federal court documents said Hall was a cannabis dealer in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, who sometimes bought his drugs in the Dallas area.
He arrived in Dallas on September 24, 1994, met two men at a car wash and gave them $ 4,700 (£ 3,541) with the expectation that they would return later with the cannabis.
The two men were Rene’s brothers.
United States Attorney General William Bar ended a nearly two-decade hiatus of federal executions this summer.
Instead, the men claimed their car and the money was stolen in a robbery.
Hall and his accomplices decided they were lying and were able to track down the address of the brothers’ Arlington apartment. Texas.
When Hall and three other men arrived at the apartment, the brothers were not there, but Lisa Rene was home, alone.
The teenager was abducted, taken back to an Arkansas motel room where she was tied up, raped, beaten with a shovel, doused with gasoline and buried alive.
After Hall’s execution, Lisa’s sister, Pearl Rene, said her family had come “to the end of a very long and painful chapter in our lives.
“The execution of Orlando Hall will never stop the suffering that we continue to endure,” he said.
“Please pray for our family and yours.”
US Attorney General William Bar ended a 17-year hiatus of federal executions in July, after announcing that prison systems were switching to a new method of using lethal injections.
prior to Donald trumpThe government resumed federal executions, only three inmates had been executed in the last 56 years.
Two other inmates are scheduled to be executed in December, including Lisa M. Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row.
Another death row inmate, Brandon Bernard, will be executed on December 10 and has asked the court to delay his appointment. He was found guilty of killing two youth ministers on a military reservation in 1999.
It is not clear whether the President elect Joe biden he will continue the practice when he takes office.
