The United States carries out rare executions during a presidential change



Terre Hot, Indian. (AP) – The Trump administration on Thursday carried out its ninth federal execution, the first in a series of 130-year presidential lame-duck executions and killings of a Texas street mob member who killed a religious couple from Iowa two decades ago. Several federal executions are planned, including a Friday in the weeks leading up to the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. One was carried out in late November. The case of Brandon Bernard, who received a dangerous injection of phenobarbital at an American prison in Terre Hott, Indiana, is the rare execution of a man who was in his teens at the time of his crime. Top figures, including reality TV star Kim Kardashian West, have called on President Donald Trump to commute Bernard’s sentence to life imprisonment. 40-East Bernard, who was separated from a light-green death chamber behind a glass barrier with witnesses, was pronounced dead at 9:27 p.m. He sent his last words to the couple’s family, who played a role in the murder, and spoke quietly to someone who knew he was going to die. “I’m sorry,” he said, raising his head and looking out the witness room windows. “These are the only words I can say that can fully capture how I feel now and how I felt that day.” When he spoke, he showed no outward signs of fear or grief. He spoke clearly and naturally. He spoke for more than three minutes, saying he was waiting for this opportunity to express his regret – not only for the family of the victims, but also for the suffering he had inflicted on his own family, referring to his role in the murder: When he and four other teenagers abducted and robbed Todd and Stacey Bagley, Bernard threw their car out of a Sunday service in Killeen, Texas with lighter fluid and set fire to the rear trunk with their bodies. தனர். Despite a 17-year hiatus, Trump resumed federal executions in July, despite an outbreak of the corona virus in US prisons. Todd Bagley’s mother, Georgia, spoke to reporters inside 30 minutes after the execution, saying she would like to thank Trump, Attorney General William Barr and others in the judiciary. “Without this process,” he read in a statement, “there would be no closure in my family necessary to move on in life.” He called the killings “a senseless act of unnecessary evil.” But when he stopped reading from the text he had prepared and apologized before Bernard died on Friday, an accomplice, Christopher Vialva, shot Buckley in the head before the group leader’s car was set on fire. He was hanged in September. “Sorry and sorry … helped so much to heal my heart,” she began to cry, then reconsidered herself. “I can say so much: I forgive them.” Earlier into the morgue, Bernard ran IV lines in both hands on a cross-shaped curb. When an American Marshal picked up a phone he looked back and asked if there were any reasons not to continue. Bernard answered quietly that Marshall could put the phone down and continue the execution. Bernard did not exhibit labored breathing and the continual pull of others who had previously been activated. A minute after the dangerous injection, his eyes slowly closed and he moved again. After 20 minutes, pale white spots appeared on his skin, and someone entered through a room door, heard his heartbeat, felt a pulse, and then walked out. Seconds later, an official said Bernard was dead. Alfred Portua, a 56-year-old Louisiana truck driver, is set to die Friday after killing his 2-year-old daughter by repeatedly hitting her head on the windows and dashboard of a truck. Bourgeois lawyers accused him of being intellectually disabled and therefore unworthy of the death penalty, but many courts did not support that claim. Before Bernard’s execution, Kardashian West tweeted that he had spoken to him before: “I always had a tough call. Brandon, as always unselfish, focused on his family and making sure they were right. He told me not to cry because our fight was not over. “Shortly before the execution was scheduled, Bernard’s lawyers filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking a stay of the execution, but the High Court rejected the request, continuing to clarify the route to the execution. Bernard was imprisoned and started a death penalty group in which inmates shared patterns for making sweaters, blankets and hats, said anti-death penalty activist Ashley Kinkide Eve. Federal execution power is also rare during a presidential transfer, especially when the death penalty is opposed by someone who supports the death penalty, such as President-elect Biden. The last execution took place in 1890 during a lame-duck period when Grover was president of Cleveland. Defense attorneys argued in court and in a petition seeking Trump’s approval that Bernard was a low-level member of the panel. They say both backbenchers may have died before Bernard set the car on fire, which contradicts government evidence at trial. The lawsuit called for Trump to intervene, and now almost all white arbitral tribunals have sentenced Bernard to death, including a lawyer in the 2000 trial. Several judges have publicly said they regret not choosing life in prison. The youths approached the police on the afternoon of June 21, 1999, and asked for a lift after they had stopped at a convenient store – planning everything and robbing the couple. After Baglis agreed, Vialva, a 19-year-old senior in the group, pulled out a gun and forced them into the trunk. Both of them were in their 20s when Bagley spoke through an opening in the back seat and insisted on accepting the kidnappers when Jesus tried for several hours to use Bagley’s ATM cards. After dragging the teenager to the side of the road, Vialva walked behind and shot Bagley in the head. The central question of the decision to sentence Bernard to death was whether Vialva’s shooting or the fire set by Bernard killed Bagley. Evidence showed that Todd Bagley may have died instantly. But a government expert, Stacy Bagley, said she had been smoking in her airspace, indicating smoke inhalation, but the shooting did not kill her. Defense lawyers have said the assertion has not been proven. They said Bernard believed both of the Buckleys were dead and feared the consequences of refusing Vialva’s orders from a high-ranking official to burn the car to destroy evidence. The first series of federal executions in the summer were by white men. Four of the five prisoners who died before Biden’s January 20 inauguration were black men. Fifth is a white woman, who will be the first female prisoner to be hanged by the federal government in nearly six decades. All rights reserved. .

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