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As clock ticks toward another Trump presidency, federal death row prisoners appeal for clemency

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President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. In Bloomington, a small community of death row spiritual advisors is struggling to support the prisoners to whom they minister.  Ross Martinie Eiler is a Mennonite, Episcopal lay minister and member of the Catholic Worker movement, which assists the homeless. And for the past three years, he’s served as a spiritual advisor for a man on federal death row.
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Ex-Marine Jorge Torrez formally sentenced to death by federal judge

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Jorge Torrez
A former Marine convicted last month of strangling a fellow service member at an Arlington military base was formally sentenced to death Friday in federal district court in Alexandria.

The result was no surprise. Jurors had already recommended that 25-year-old Jorge Torrez face capital punishment for the 2009 killing of 20-year-old Navy Petty Officer Amanda Jean Snell, and U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady was bound by law to impose the penalty. He did so after a minutes-long hearing, saying Torrez had committed “unconscionable crimes” and no errors had been committed to invalidate the outcome of his trial.

Torrez confirmed with the judge that he planned to appeal the case — though he did so only after sighing deeply and asking for a moment to confer with his attorneys. He declined the judge’s invitation to speak on his own behalf.

“There’s nothing I’d like to say, your honor,” he said just before O’Grady imposed the sentence.

Torrez will join six other inmates from Virginia cases on federal death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks death-penalty cases nationwide. Torrez’s execution, though, is far from imminent. The post-sentence legal process generally takes years, and according to the center, no federal inmate from Virginia has been put to death since 1927, which is as far back as the group’s database tracks.

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Washington Post, May 30, 2014

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