US executes Brandon Bernard, first of five on death row before Donald Trump leaves office
- Brandon Bernard, a 40-year-old black inmate, was put to death for his role in a 1999 double murder in Texas
- Several more inmates are set to be executed before Joe Biden takes office on January 20
The Trump administration on Thursday carried out its ninth federal execution of the year and the first during a presidential lame-duck period in 130 years, putting to death a Texas street-gang member for his role in the slayings of a religious couple from Iowa more than two decades ago.
Four more federal executions, including one Friday, are planned in the weeks before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
The case of Brandon Bernard, who received a lethal injection of phenobarbital inside a death chamber at a US prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, was a rare execution of a person who was in his teens when his crime was committed.
Several high-profile figures, including reality TV star Kim Kardashian West, had appealed to President Donald Trump to commute Bernard’s sentence to life in prison. More than 500,000 people had signed petitions urging Trump to commute Bernard’s sentence to life.
With witnesses looking on from behind a glass barrier, the 40-year-old Bernard was pronounced dead at 9.27pm Eastern time.
Bernard directed his last words to the family of the couple he killed, speaking with striking calm for someone who knew he was about to die. “I’m sorry,” he said, lifting his head and looking at the witness-room windows. “That’s the only words that I can say that completely capture how I feel now and how I felt that day.”