Many high-ranking figures, including reality TV star Kim Kardashian West, have appealed to President Donald Trump to commute Bernard’s sentence to life imprisonment. Bernard, 40, was pronounced dead at 9:27 p.m. Eastern time, when he saw witnesses from behind a glass barrier. Bernard sent his last words to the family of the couple he killed, speaking quietly for someone he knew was going to die. “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.” Speaking for more than three minutes, Bernard said he was looking forward to the opportunity to express his regret – not only to the victim’s family, but also to his own family. Earlier, he said of his role in the murder, “I want to get this back, but I can’t.” Bernard was 18 years old when he kidnapped and robbed Todd and Stacey Bagley on their way out of Sunday service in Gilline, Texas. Despite a corona virus outbreak in US prisons, Trump resumed federal executions in July after a 17-year hiatus. 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: “The toughest call I have ever received. Brandon, as always unselfish, focused on his family and making sure they were right. He told me not to cry because our fight was over. “Shortly before the execution was scheduled, Bernard’s lawyers filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking a stay of the execution. Alan Dershowitz, a retired Harvard law professor who was part of Donald Trump’s indictment defense committee, and O.J. Simpson, Klaus van Bulo and Mike Tyson; And Ken Starr, who backed Trump during the indictment and is best known as an independent adviser who led the investigation into Bill Clinton. But about two and a half hours after the execution was scheduled, the Supreme Court rejected the request, clarifying the way to proceed with 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. Eve sent him the latest contact with the Associated Press Bernard on Wednesday, in which he wrote, “I feel better today!” Eve, a lawyer based in Indianapolis but not representing Bernard, said he did not resign to death like the others hanged this year. “He wants to live actively,” he said. Federal executions are also rare during the transfer of power to the president, especially when the death penalty is opposed by the president-elect, such as Biden. The last execution took place during a lame-duck period when Grover was president of Cleveland in the 1890s. Defense attorneys argued in court and Bernard was a subordinate, subordinate member of the panel in a petition seeking permission from Trump. They say both Buckley may have died before Bernard threw their car into the lighter fluid, which contradicts government evidence at trial. Bernard has repeatedly expressed regret. “I can’t imagine how they feel about losing their family,” Bernard said of the Buckley relatives in a 2016 video report from the execution. “I want us all to go back and change that.” He also described participating in youth development programs and embracing religion, saying, “I have tried to be a better person ever since.” The case called for Trump to intervene, including a lawyer at his 2000 trial, who now claims that racism could have had an impact on the death sentence imposed on Bernard by almost all white tribunals. Several judges have publicly stated that they regret not choosing life in prison. Kardashian West said in a recent tweet that Bernard’s “was relatively small compared to other teens involved.” The judiciary refused to delay the execution of Bernard, another prisoner on Friday and three others on Friday, even after eight officers who took part in an execution last month tested positive for the corona virus. Eight federal executions in 2020 are already higher than in the previous 56 years. Christopher Vialva, one of Bernard’s co-defendants, was hanged in September. Todd Bagley’s mother, Georgia, issued a statement after the execution, saying, “When one person deliberately takes another’s life, they suffer the consequences of their actions.” Vialva, a 19-year-old teenager, shot and killed Bagley, who was lying on the ground before Bernard set the car on fire, prosecutors said. On June 21, 1999, the youths approached the police and asked for a lift after they had parked in a convenient store – planning everything to rob the couple. After Baglis agreed, Vialva pulled out a gun and forced them into the trunk. The police, both in their 20s, spoke through an opening in the back seat and urged the kidnappers to accept Jesus when they tried for several hours to use Bagley’s ATM cards. After dragging the teen to the side of the road, Vialva walked behind and shot Bagley in the head. The key question in the decision to sentence Bernard to death was whether Vialva’s shooting or the fire set by Bernard killed Bagley. Test evidence showed that Todd Buckley 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 the two 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 was carried out by white men, which critics said would be less controversial amid summer demonstrations of racial discrimination. Four of the five prisoners who died before Biden’s January 20 inauguration were black men. The fifth is a white woman, who will be the first female prisoner to be hanged by the federal government in nearly six decades.
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