Brandon Bernard is executed despite pleas from Kim Kardashian

1.9k

View
comments

The federal government executed Brandon Bernard on Thursday night after the Supreme Court denied a last-minute appeal despite a plea from reality star turned prisoners rights activist Kim Kardashian.   

Bernard, 40, received a lethal injection of phenobarbital at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, in a rare execution of a person who was in his teens when the crime occurred. 

He was declared dead at 9.27pm as witnesses, including members of the families of his victims, watched from behind a glass barrier. 

In his final words, Bernard addressed the families of Todd and Stacie Bagley through the window, telling them ‘I’m sorry’. 

‘That’s the only words that I can say that completely capture how I feel now and how I felt that day,’ he added. 

Todd’s mother Georgia Bagley spoke after the execution to say that she forgave him and that his apology ‘helped very much to heal my heart’ after waiting 21 years for justice. 

Meanwhile Kim, who has been fighting to commute Bernard’s sentence, mourned his loss, tweeting that he was an ‘amazing person’, claiming she felt ‘so messed up right now’ and that ‘our system is so f****d up’. 

According the Associated Press, Bernard spoke for three more minutes before his death, saying he had been waiting for this chance to say he was sorry – not only to the victims’ family, but also for the pain he caused his own family. 

He remained calm as the curtain was lifted around the death chamber and journalists in the press pool claimed he nodded at them in greeting and showed no signs of fear. 

He is said to have closed his eyes a minute after the injection but showed no twitching or labored breathing as other executions have. His pulse was taken and he was declared dead after white blotches began to appear on his skin after 20 minutes.  

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, in 1999. The couple were shot and killed and then their car was set on fire.   

The execution was delayed from 6pm after Bernard’s legal team pushed a final appeal but it was dismissed by the Supreme Court and allowed to proceed. 

The families and friends of the Bagleys welcomed the ‘closure needed to move on in life’ following his death, both thanking President Trump for allowing it to proceed. 

‘It has been very difficult to wait 21 years for the sentence that was imposed by the judge and jury on those who cruelly participated in the destruction of our children to be finally completed,’ said Todd’s mother Georgia Bagley. 

‘This senseless act of unnecessary evil was premeditated and had many opportunities to be stopped at any time during a 9-hour period. This was torture as they pleaded for their lives in the trunk of their own car.

‘Please remember that the lives of family and friends were shattered and we have all grieved for 21 years waiting for justice to finally be served.’

She added, however, that Bernard’s apology before his death ‘helped very much to heal my heart’ and to allow her to forgive him. 

‘I can very much say: I forgive them,’ she told reporters through tears, referencing Brandon and his accomplice Christopher Vialva, who was also executed in September.

‘On June 21, 1999, our lives were changed forever because this is the day that Todd and Stacie were executed!’ wrote Charles Woodard, Stacie’s dad, on behalf of her family. 

‘I pray that Brandon has accepted Christ as his Savior, because if he has, Todd and Stacie will welcome him into heaven with love and forgiveness.’ 

However, Bernard’s lawyers called his execution a ‘stain on America’s criminal justice system’ as they claimed he ‘never stopped feeling shame and profound remorse’ for his crime. 

As the Supreme Court decision was announced, they made a statement stating that ‘those who love Brandon’ are filled with ‘righteous anger and deep sadness at the actions of the federal government in taking his life’. 

‘Brandon made one terrible mistake at age 18. But he did not kill anyone, and he never stopped feeling shame and profound remorse for his actions in the crime,’ added attorney Robert C. Owen. 

‘Brandon’s execution is a stain on America’s criminal justice system. But I pray that even in his death, Brandon will advance his commitment to helping others by moving us closer to a time when this country does not pointlessly and maliciously kill young black men who pose no threat to anyone.’ 

Their sorrow was echoed by Kim Kardashian who spoke out again about her support for Bernard after his death.

‘I’m so messed up right now,’ she began in a long Twitter thread. 

‘They killed Brandon. He was such a reformed person. So hopeful and positive until the end. More importantly he is sorry, so sorry for the hurt and pain he has caused others.

Kardashian added that Bernard’s attorney called her while he was in the chair to pass on a final message. 

‘Brandon said he loves you and wants to say thank you again,’ the attorney allegedly said. 

‘Brandon wanted me to tell every single person who worked on his behalf supporting him in any way a huge thank you. He was certain he was gonna have the chance to tell you all himself and write you all letters but he told me to tell you all how grateful he is for you! 

‘His main message that he learned in his life was to not hang out with the wrong crowd. That was so important to him that he shared that with the youth. It got him caught up and he made poor choices.’

She continued that Bernard had hoped the public support for him would help his family and to help reduce any shame they felt. 

‘I could go on and on about what an amazing person Brandon was. I do know he left this earth feeling supported and loved and at peace,’ Kardashian concluded. 

‘This just has to change: our system is so f****d up.’ 

President Trump could still have granted Bernard clemency to halt the execution after the Supreme Court decision.

He was the ninth federal inmate put to death since July, when Trump ended a 17-year hiatus in federal executions.  

A little more than an hour before the execution was scheduled, Bernard´s lawyers filed papers with the Supreme Court seeking to have it halted.  

The legal team also expanded to include two very high-profile attorneys Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr. 

Dershowitz is the retired Harvard law professor who was part of Donald Trump´s impeachment defense team and whose clients have included O.J. Simpson, Claus von Bulow and Mike Tyson, while Starr also defended Trump during the impeachment and is most famous as an independent counsel who led the investigation into Bill Clinton. 

Earlier on Thursday, Kim had led a countdown to Bernard’s execution saying in a series of recent tweets that his ‘role was minor compared to that of the other teens involved.’ 

She said that she spoke to him as his execution time approached calling it the ‘hardest call I’ve ever had’ but that she still remained hopeful that the outcome could be changed. 

‘Just spoke to Brandon for what will likely be the last time. Hardest call I’ve ever had. Brandon, selfless as always, was focused on his family and making sure they are ok. He told me not to cry because our fight isn’t over,’ she wrote.  

‘When he told me he’s claustrophobic and they offered to give him a shot of Sedative to calm him down before they put him in the chair and he just didn’t want to panic, I literally lost it. I had to mute my phone so he wouldn’t hear me cry like that,’ the reality TV star added. 

‘We didn’t say goodbye bc we wanted to be hopeful that we would talk again, we said talk to you soon!’  

Bella Hadid also shared information throughout the day about Bernard and even said that she was in tears over the whole thing. 

‘Can’t stop crying. This is so f**ked up,’ the model shared on her Instagram story. 

And after Bernard’s death, Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted that the country needs to ‘abolish the death penalty— period’. 

His call was joined by Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Presley as well as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. 

‘This is absolutely sickening. Brandon Bernard should still be alive,’ de Blasio wrote.  

However, Texas Senator Ted Cruz hit back, claiming that the Democratic politicians were ‘siding with this vicious murderer’. 

‘Don’t pretend he was a saint. Here are his actual crimes (quoted verbatim from DOJ)—which you ignore,’ he wrote, before listing the events leading up to the Bagleys death and how they had been kept in a car trunk for hours while they begged with their captors.  

Bernard and accomplice Christopher Vialva were sentenced to death in 2000 after a jury found them guilty of carjacking and murdering Todd and Stacie Bagley, married Christian youth ministers from Iowa, on the Fort Hood army base in Texas the previous year. 

They were among the five members of the local 212 Piru Bloods gang that participated in the killing after the Bagleys attended a church service.  

Vialva was executed by lethal injection in September and became the first black man to face the punishment since the Trump administration resumed carrying out federal executions after a 17-year hiatus. 

Defense attorneys had argued in court and in a petition for clemency from Trump that Bernard was a low-ranking, subservient member of the group that killed the Bagleys. 

His lawyers also argued that he was not present when the Bagleys were abducted by Vialva and forced into the trunk of their car. 

Later, after Vialva shot the couple in the trunk, Bernard followed Vialva’s orders to set the car on fire, according to trial records. 

His attorneys said 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 had 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. 

The Trump administration is planning four more federal executions before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. 

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.  

The American Civil Liberties Union has been fighting to at least temporarily halt all federal executions due to pandemic concerns.

Their effort comes after the spiritual adviser to former inmate Orlando Hall contracted COVID-19 after he traveled to the federal death chamber at the prison in Terre Haute, Indiana for Hall’s November execution.

Since then, the Justice Department has revealed in court filings that at least eight, or 20 percent, of the Bureau of Prison staff who participated in Hall’s execution, have since tested positive for COVID-19.

However, the Justice Department still refused to delay Thursday’s execution of Bernard, another inmate on Friday and three more in January.  

Alfred Bourgeois, a 56-year-old Louisiana truck driver, is set to die Friday for killing his 2-year-old daughter by repeatedly slamming her head into a truck’s windows and dashboard. 

Bourgeois’ lawyers alleged he was intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty, but several courts said evidence didn’t support that claim. 

The eight federal executions in 2020 already is more than in the previous 56 years combined.