U.S. Plans to Execute Inmate Who Murdered Two Youth Ministers
Source: New York Times
A former Texas man convicted of murdering two youth ministers in 1999 was scheduled to become on Thursday the seventh federal inmate and the first Black man executed since Attorney General William P. Barr announced the resumption of federal executions last year.
The inmate, Christopher Andre Vialva, 40, was convicted in 2000 of carjacking and murdering the couple, Todd and Stacie Bagley, who were visiting Texas from Iowa and had just attended Sunday services, the Justice Department said.
Mr. Vialva was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Eastern time at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., according to his lawyer, Susan M. Otto. The Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon denied Mr. Vialvas request for a stay of execution. He had also asked President Trump to commute his sentence to life in prison, Ms. Otto said.
Mr. Vialva, who was 19 when he murdered the Bagleys, was to be the first federal inmate executed for crimes committed as a teenager in more than 70 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group that studies capital punishment.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/us/federal-execution-christopher-vialva.html
George II
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(61,595 posts)Source: Associated Press
BY MICHAEL TARM
15 minutes ago
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) 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 administrations 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: Im ready, Father.
The execution comes during demonstrations, disappointment, violence and sadness in Louisville, Kentucky, after a grand jury did not charge the officers who shot Breonna Taylor with her death, rather filing lower level felonies for shooting into neighboring homes. Questions about racial bias in the criminal justice system have been front and center since May following the death of George Floyd after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on the handcuffed Black mans neck for several minutes.
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-terre-haute-executions-archive-d54440254ddea7685bcab5417612f0de