The federal government this evening completed is seventh execution in the span of just over two months. This AP article, headlined "Feds put first Black inmate to death since execution restart," provides these details:
A man who killed a religious couple visiting Texas from Iowa was executed Thursday, the first Black inmate put to death as part of the Trump administration’s resumption of federal executions.
Christopher Vialva, 40, was pronounced dead shortly before 7 p.m. EDT after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. In a last statement, Vialva asked God to comfort the families of the couple he had killed, saying, “Father … heal their hearts with grace and love.” His final words were: “I’m ready, Father.”...
A report this month by the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center said Black people remain overrepresented on death rows and that Black people who kill white people are far more likely to be sentenced to death than white people who kill Black people. Of the 56 inmates currently on federal death row, 26 — or nearly 50% — are Black, according to center data updated Wednesday; 22, or nearly 40%, are white and seven, around 12% were Latino. There is one Asian on federal death row. Black people make up only about 13% of the population....
Vialva was 19 years old in 1999 when he shot Todd and Stacie Bagley and burned them in the trunk of their car. Vialva’s lawyer, Susan Otto, has said race played a role in landing her client on death row for killing 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 critics argue was a political calculation to avoid uproar. The sixth was Navajo.
“I believe when someone deliberately takes the life of another, they suffer the consequences for their actions,” Todd Bagley’s mother, Georgia, wrote in a statement released after the execution. “Christopher’s mother had the opportunity to visit him for the past 21 years,” she wrote. “We have had to wait for 21 years for justice and closure. We cannot be with our children for visits or to see them on holidays. We were denied that privilege,” Bagley’s mother wrote.
In the video statement his lawyers released Thursday, Vialva expressed regret for what he’d done and said he was a changed man. “I committed a grave wrong when I was a lost kid and took two precious lives from this world,” he said. “Every day, I wish I could right this wrong.”
As detailed at this DPIC webpage, there remain 55 persons on federal death row, ten of which were convicted more than two decades ago. As of this writing, Attorney General Barr has not yet sought to set dates for any additional federal executions, but he has moved quickly in the past.
Comments
Post a Comment