U.S. executes Orlando Hall, eighth federal execution under Trump

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government put convicted rapist and murderer Orlando Hall to death by lethal injection on Thursday, the eighth execution under the Trump administration since capital punishment was reinstated at the federal level over the summer.

Hall, 49, was pronounced dead at 11:47 p.m. EST after officials at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons administered him a fatal dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital at the bureau’s execution chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, the agency said.

Hall was the second African-American man to be executed by lethal injection on federal death row in recent months.

He was convicted by an all-white jury for his role in the 1994 kidnapping, rape and murder of the 16-year-old sister of two Texas drug dealers whom Hall suspected had stolen money from him.

He and three other men kidnapped Lisa Rene from her apartment in Texas and drove her back to a motel room in Arkansas where they tied her up, raped her and beat her with a shovel before she was buried alive.

A statement from the victim’s sister, Pearl Rene, issued after the execution expressing the family’s relief at reaching “the end of a very long and painful chapter in our lives.”

“The execution of Orlando Hall will never stop the suffering we continue to endure,” she wrote. “Please pray for our family as well as his.”

U.S. Attorney General William Barr ended a 17-year hiatus in federal executions in July, after announcing last year that the Bureau of Prisons was switching to a new single-drug method for lethal injections, from a three-drug combination it last used in 2003.

Hall was put to death shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court denied an 11th-hour petition for a stay, over-ruling a lower-court order that had briefly blocked the execution on grounds that protocols for administering sodium pentobarbital without a prescription violated the law.

Hall’s lawyers also sought to stay the execution in two other cases, also rejected by the high court.

In one, they argued his attorneys needed more time to prepare a clemency petition, but were hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a third case, they claimed that racial discrimination played a role in securing an all-white jury to decide his fate.

According to a statistical analysis cited in that litigation, the federal death penalty in Texas between 1988 and 2010 was “disproportionately meted-out based on race.”

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which filed an amicus brief on Hall’s behalf, argued there was evidence prosecutors in his case had improperly stricken Black individuals from the jury pool based on racial motivations.

Hall’s execution came as the United States has faced a reckoning over racial injustice sparked by the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man taken into custody and handcuffed, as he lay gasping for breath, his neck pinned to the ground under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis.

Of the 56 people on federal death row, 26 of them, or 46%, are Black, and 22, or 39%, are white. Black people comprise only 13% of the U.S. population.

Source: Reuters, Sarah N. Lynch, November 19, 2020

🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

California | Becerra vows to extend moratorium despite past support for capital punishment

SACRAMENTO—Democrat Xavier Becerra defended the death penalty while serving as California’s attorney general, a punishment his office actively sought in the case of a gunman convicted of an Orange County mass shooting, but as the front-running candidate for governor, he has vowed to block executions if elected in November. Becerra said he will extend the blanket reprieve for all death row inmates that Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted by executive order in 2019, saying he supported “moving our state away from a costly, flawed system that disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities and too often gets it wrong.”

Iran | Afghan Citizen Executed in Wheelchair Due to Severe Mobility Disability

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Iranian authorities have reportedly executed an Afghan citizen, identified as Valijan Nourzay, at the central prison in Rafsanjan, according to the human rights organization Hengaw. Hengaw said in a statement on Sunday, September 6, that Nourzay was executed early Wednesday last week at Rafsanjan Central Prison. According to the organization, Nourzay had a severe mobility disability and was executed while in a wheelchair. Hengaw, citing informed sources, reported that Nourzay had been pursued by Iranian authorities three years ago over an alleged murder. He was reportedly seriously wounded after Iranian security forces opened fire on him in Rafsanjan before being arrested and later sentenced to death.

California | He spent 19 years on death row. His conversion to Judaism helped him endure

Johnny Morales struggled to find sleep. He dozed off for a few moments, but officers came to his death row cell and woke him a little after midnight. They needed to inventory and box up his belongings. He was leaving San Quentin. Hands cuffed behind his back, he walked across the empty upper yard in the dim gray hours before daylight. An officer walked alongside him step for step, black latex-gloved fingers holding onto Morales’s arm. For almost 20 years, Morales could only experience the world outside his 4-by-11 foot cell in the condemned housing unit like this—chained and escorted by officers. Security protocols required all death row residents be handcuffed or shackled any time they were out in open space with staff.

Florida executes Daniel Owen Conahan Jr.

In Florida’s 15th execution this year, man put to death for killing linked to ‘Hog Trail Murders’ A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death Thursday, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year. Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a 3-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least 6 people over a 3-year span.

Egypt TV presenter and 11 others sentenced to death in major drugs case

Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa and 11 others have been sentenced to death by hanging after being convicted of drug trafficking and rape, while nine defendants received life sentences and seven were acquitted. Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa, 39, has been sentenced to death by hanging along with 11 other defendants after being found guilty in a drugs case involving a criminal gang accused of importing ingredients used to manufacture narcotics for sale.

He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?

23-hour solitary confinement. 115-degree heat. Jimmie Duncan is haunted by the decades he spent in Louisiana’s Angola Prison—and how, even after being released, he still isn’t truly free. Jimmie “Chris” Duncan wiped the sweat off his forehead as he assessed his temporary home from the parking lot of a rundown motel in central Louisiana. Sure, there’s drug dealing and prostitution, he said on a recent summer afternoon. And he suspected his neighbors were cooking meth on a floor below the room he paid $350 a week to rent.

Afghanistan | Signs that horrific brutality is set to return

Kneeling next to a ditch, deep in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, a 22-year-old woman draws her last breath in a 'desert court' before she is shot in the back with an AK-47. Her executioner? Likely her hardline militant husband, in what the Taliban consider an 'honour killing'. It took less than an hour to decide Najiba had been adulterous – although it has been suggested this accusation was fabricated to protect her husband's reputation. Adultery is a crime that deserves capital punishment under the Taliban's strict interpretation of Sharia law. Fourteen years on from her death, little is known about her story, like many women slowly being erased from the fabric of Afghan society.

Singapore | Ministry of Home Affairs refutes claims that death penalty was discussed during visit by Israel's security ministry

The Ministry of Home Affairs says discussions with the Israeli government involved the sharing of best practices in emergency response, crime prevention, and forensics. Issues relating to the death penalty “were never part of the meeting and were not discussed." SINGAPORE: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday (Sep 11) refuted claims by an Israeli media outlet that the death penalty was discussed during a visit by an Israeli delegation in May. The Haaretz newspaper reported on Sep 7 that a delegation comprising representatives from the Israel Prison Service and National Security Ministry made a “secret visit” to Singapore that month.

Arizona AG seeks execution date for man convicted in 1995 trooper killing

Trooper Bob Martin was killed during a traffic stop on the Beeline highway; execution for his killer could be as soon as January PHOENIX (AZFamily)—The Arizona Attorney General is asking for an execution date to be set for a man convicted in the killing of an Arizona State Trooper over 30 years ago. On Aug. 15, 1995, Trooper Bob Martin was shot and killed while performing a traffic stop along the Beeline Highway.

Thailand | Killer of hotel receptionist sentenced to death

Hua Hin Provincial Court has sentenced a man accused of killing and robbing a hotel employee in January to death, ruling that the crime was so serious and shocking that there were no grounds for leniency despite his guilty plea. The court handed down the sentence on Tuesday in a case involving the killing of a hotel employee during a robbery in Hua Hin district of Prachuap Khiri Khan province.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog