Brandon Bernard, a former Texas street-gang member on death row for a crime he committed when he was 18. (Twitter)
The Associated Press, Chicago Thursday 10 December 2020
The Trump administration is planning an unprecedented five more federal executions before President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, starting with a Texas street-gang member set to be put to death Thursday for his role in the 1999 slayings of an Iowa religious couple whose bodies he burned in the trunk of their car.
Brandon Bernard was 18 when he and four other teenagers abducted and robbed Todd and Stacie Bagley on their way from a Sunday service in Killeen, Texas. He would be the ninth federal inmate put to death since July, when President Donald Trump ended a 17-year hiatus in federal executions.
If Bernard, now 40, receives a lethal injection as planned at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, it would be a rare execution of a person who was in his teens when the crime occurred.
Federal executions during a presidential transfer of power also are rare, especially during a transition from a death-penalty proponent to a president-elect like Biden opposed to capital punishment. The last time executions occurred in a lame-duck period was during the presidency of Grover Cleveland in the 1890s.
Defense attorneys have argued in court and in a petition for clemency from Trump that Bernard was a low-ranking, subservient member of the group. They say both Bagleys were likely dead before Bernard doused their car with lighter fluid and set it on fire, a claim that conflicts with government testimony at trial. Bernard, they say, has repeatedly expressed remorse.
“I can’t imagine how they feel about losing their family,” Bernard said about surviving Bagley relatives in a 2016 video statement from death row. “I wish that we could all go back and change it.” He also described taking part in youth outreach programs and embracing religion, saying, “I have tried to be a better person since that day.”
The case has prompted calls for Trump to intervene, including from one prosecutor at his 2000 trial who now says racial bias may have influenced the nearly all-white jury’s imposition of a death sentence against Bernard, who is Black. Several jurors have also since said publicly that they regret not opting for life in prison instead.
Reality TV star Kim Kardashian is among those who have asked Trump to stop the execution, saying in a series of recent tweets that Bernard’s “role was minor compared to that of the other teens involved.”
The Justice Department refused to delay Thursday's execution of Bernard, another inmate on Friday and three more in January, even after eight officials who participated in an execution last month tested positive for the coronavirus. The eight federal executions in 2020 already is more than in the previous 56 years combined.
One of Bernard's co-defendants, Christopher Vialva, was executed in September. Todd Bagley’s mother, Georgia, released a statement after that execution, saying, “I believe when someone deliberately takes the life of another, they suffer the consequences for their actions.”
Prosecutors said Vialva, the oldest of the teens at 19, was the ringleader who shot the Bagleys, as they lay in the trunk before Bernard set the car on fire.
The teenagers, three of whom were under 18, approached the Bagleys in the afternoon on June 21, 1999, and asked them for a lift after they stopped at a convenience store — planning all along to rob the couple. After the Bagleys agreed, Vialva pulled a gun and forced them into the trunk.
The Bagleys, both of whom were in their 20s, spoke through an opening in the back seat and urged their kidnappers to accept Jesus as they drove around for hours trying to use the Bagleys' ATM cards. After the teens pulled to the side of the road, Vialva walked to the back and shot the Bagleys in the head.
The central question in the decision to sentence Bernard to death was whether Vialva’s gunshots or the fire set by Bernard killed the Bagleys.
Trial evidence showed Todd Bagley likely died instantly. But a government expert said Stacie Bagley had soot in her airway, indicating smoke inhalation and not the gunshot killed her. Defense attorneys have said that assertion wasn’t proven. They’ve also said Bernard believed both Bagleys were dead and that he feared the consequences of refusing the order of the higher ranking Vialva to burn the car to destroy evidence.
The first series of federal executions over the summer were of white men, which critics said seemed calculated to make them less controversial amid summer protests over racial discrimination. Four of the five inmates set to die before Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration are Black men. The fifth is a white woman who would be the first female inmate executed by the federal government in nearly six decades.
The federal prosecutor who now wants a life term for Bernard, Angel Moore, says recent research shows people tend to view Blacks as more to blame than their white counterparts when the facts surrounding a crime are the same, and that young Black men are less likely to be given benefits of the doubt by jurors because of their immaturity.
“I always took pride in representing the United States as a federal prosecutor, and I think executing Brandon would be a terrible stain on the nation’s honor,” Moore, who is now in private practice in San Antonio, wrote in a recent op-ed in The Indianapolis Star.
One juror whose 2016 written statement was included in the White House petition said he still believes Bernard is responsible for “horrible decisions that had horrendous outcomes.”
“However, his young age at the time does weigh on me,” he wrote. “I do not believe that Brandon should be executed for bad choices he made when he was 18.”
A statement from Bernard’s 16-year-old daughter is also included in which she describes her father as constantly warning her to stay away from the wrong crowds and how a single bad decision can ruin your life.
She added: “I am hoping and asking the President to spare my dad’s life.”
#BrandonBernard should not be executed:
1. He was 18 at the time.
2. He was not the shooter.
3. The prosecutor and 5 of the jurors now support clemency.
4. He’s spent decades in prison w/out a write up, helping at risk youth.
5. There’s bipartisan support for his commutation.
Kim Kardashian West pleads with Donald Trump to pardon death row inmate
Thursday 10 December 2020,
Thursday 10 December 2020,
Kim Kardashian West is a reality TV star and criminal justice reform campaigner
Credit: AP
Kim Kardashian West has urged Donald Trump to pardon a death row inmate set to be executed on Thursday.
Kim Kardashian West has urged Donald Trump to pardon a death row inmate set to be executed on Thursday.
The reality TV star and criminal justice reform campaigners shared a plea to save Brandon Bernard, a 40-year-old imprisoned in Indiana, on social media.
Bernard was sentenced to death in 2000 after being found guilty of two counts of murder. At the age of 18, he was involved in the abduction and robbery of two youth ministers in Texas.
Kardashian West described the crime as “terrible” but argued Bernard’s role was “minor compared to that of the other teens involved, two of whom are home from prison now”.
She called on Mr Trump to intervene and stop the execution.
She tweeted: “Most of the time executions happen, in our names, without a lot of attention given to them.
"This is unacceptable. For the next 24 hours, I will be tweeting about Brandon and his case and why his life should be spared by @realDonaldTrump.”
Mother-of-four Kardashian West urged her followers to tweet the president asking him to act.
Campaigners have been working to save Bernard’s life, arguing that during his trial prosecutors withheld evidence that could have influenced the jury at sentencing.
They say he only occupied the “lowest rung” of the gang with whom prosecutors alleged he and his co-defendants were affiliated.
Bernard was sentenced to death for his part in the murders of Todd and Stacie Bagley. Some of his accomplices were under 18 and ineligible for the federal death penalty so received jail sentences.
However, another defendant, who was 19 at the time of the crime, was executed in September.
If Bernard is put to death, he would be the ninth federal prisoner to be executed since Mr Trump’s administration ended a 17-year pause in federal executions in July.
Kardashian West has become a prominent criminal justice reform campaigner and has met Mr Trump at the White House.
Her work led to grandmother Alice Marie Johnson being freed from prison in 2018.
