Page 4 of 8 FirstFirst ... 23456 ... LastLast
Results 31 to 40 of 72

Thread: Brandon Anthony Micah Bernard - Federal Execution - December 10, 2020

  1. #31
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2015
    Location
    New Jersey, unfortunately
    Posts
    4,382
    U.S. executions may go forward Thursday and Dec. 10, appeals court rules

    A federal appeals court early Wednesday refused to delay the scheduled execution of two prisoners, including one set for Thursday, but allowed litigation seeking to modify the Justice Department’s lethal-injection procedures to continue.

    Lawyers for death row inmates have challenged the federal government’s lethal-injection methods since Attorney General William P. Barr announced new procedures last year and resumed federal executions for the first time in more than a dozen years.

    Attorneys for 13 prisoners — including two scheduled executions this month and next — told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit this week that the drug the government uses, pentobarbital, causes “excruciating pain and suffering before dying” when not paired with a separate pain-relieving drug, in violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

    A divided three-judge circuit panel ruled that a lower court was wrong to toss out a challenge by death row inmates Orlando Hall and Brandon Barnard, finding the inmates alleged a “plausible” Eighth Amendment claim that the government’s methods involve unnecessary, severe and tortuous pain that could be avoided by adding a pain-relieving injection.

    The unsigned order declined to stay the men’s executions, however, saying the Supreme Court on July 14 ruled under similar circumstances that another prisoner had failed to show he was likely to succeed on a constitutional argument. That prisoner, Daniel Lewis Lee, was executed later that day.

    The order indicates that Judges Patricia A. Millett and Neomi Rao refused to delay the executions.

    In a separate opinion, dissenting in part, Judge Cornelia T.L. Pillard said she would have put the executions on hold until the government complies with the statutory requirement that it must have a prescription to use pentobarbital.

    “It is the government’s prerogative to execute the plaintiffs by a method of its choosing. But if it elects a method subject to statutory requirements, the government must then abide by those requirements,” Pillard wrote.

    For example, the judge wrote, if the government chose to execute plaintiffs by firing squad, and federal law required that members be certified marksmen, the government could not simply ignore the law.

    In a separate opinion, dissenting in part, Rao disagreed that prescription requirements of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act apply to drugs administered for capital punishment and asserted that prisoners had no authority to challenge its nonenforcement.

    The panel’s ruling, which can be appealed to the Supreme Court, means the government can continue to perform executions as it has since July.

    An attorney for the prisoners, Jonathan Meltzer, said they would immediately appeal.

    Hall is scheduled to be executed Thursday after being sentenced for kidnapping, raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl in Arkansas in 1994. Bernard, set for execution Dec. 10, was convicted of killing two youth ministers on a military reservation in 1999. One of his accomplices was executed for his role in the murders in September.

    A third death-row inmate, Lisa Montgomery, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 8. Montgomery, who would be the first woman executed by the U.S. government in nearly 70 years, is not part of the lawsuit.

    The ruling comes as part of a broader challenge to federal execution procedures that has so far been unsuccessful. The Supreme Court this summer declined a flurry of legal challenges to the Justice Department’s plans to resume federal executions. That cleared the way for the Trump administration to carry out seven lethal injections since July, more than the total number of executions the federal government had carried out over the previous three decades.

    President-elect Joe Biden opposes the death penalty, and his campaign has said he will work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and encourage states to follow.

    The Justice Department argued that the latest claims were a delaying tactic and noted that the justices have allowed the other executions that followed the same procedures to go forward.

    “Hall and Bernard were both sentenced to death over two decades ago for exceptionally brutal crimes; their convictions and sentences have repeatedly been upheld; and their challenges to the protocol have received an extraordinary amount of judicial review over the past year,” said the court filing from the government lawyers.

    “There is no logical or equitable basis to delay their executions when seven other federal executions — including that of Bernard’s co-defendant — have been allowed to proceed under the same challenged protocol at earlier stages of this litigation,” they wrote.

    Attorneys for the death row inmates were appealing a district-court decision from September. According to a cardiovascular expert for the death row inmates, most if not all prisoners “will experience excruciating suffering including sensations of drowning and suffocation” before they die, after being injected with five grams of pentobarbital.

    The Federal Bureau of Prisons is required by law to obtain a prescription before administering a controlled substance, the attorneys say, and the drug should be paired with a pain killer to avoid gratuitous harm.

    The Justice Department disputes the assertion that prisoners experience the near-drowning sensation known as “pulmonary edema” while still aware and conscious.

    Government lawyer Melissa Patterson told the D.C. Circuit at oral argument Monday that the prisoners should not be able to “grind all lethal injections to a halt” because of a failure to include a prescription.

    U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan in Washington found that the government is violating the law by administering the pentobarbital without a prescription. But she declined to issue an injunction, saying in part that she was bound by previous Supreme Court rulings.

    Chutkan said she could not consider the case “in a vacuum” and that the Supreme Court had in a previous case already addressed “most of the evidence Plaintiffs have presented in this case and found that it was not enough to warrant injunctive relief.”

    In July, the Supreme Court overturned an earlier order from Chutkan, and in a 5-4 opinion said prisoners on death row had “not made the showing required to justify last-minute intervention.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...3b4_story.html
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  2. #32
    Senior Member Frequent Poster NanduDas's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2018
    Location
    California
    Posts
    419
    Quote Originally Posted by Aaron View Post
    Attorneys for 13 prisoners — including two scheduled executions this month and next — told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit this week that the drug the government uses, pentobarbital, causes “excruciating pain and suffering before dying” when not paired with a separate pain-relieving drug, in violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
    Pentobarbital and pentobarbital alone has been the go to drug for euthanasia of humans and animals for decades. They really need to shut down this ridiculous lie.
    "The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer." -Theodore Roosevelt

  3. #33
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2015
    Location
    New Jersey, unfortunately
    Posts
    4,382
    I'm sure SCOTUS will be happy to shut it down once more if necessary.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  4. #34
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
    Location
    Tennessee
    Posts
    7,316
    On November 24, 2020, Bernard filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court in Indiana.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/in...cv00616/188150
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

  5. #35
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
    Location
    Tennessee
    Posts
    7,316
    On November 27, 2020, Bernard filed another habeas petition in Federal District Court in Indiana.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/in...cv00631/188220
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

  6. #36
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2020
    Posts
    1,248
    Federal judge denies stay of execution for Texas man

    By Danielle Haynes
    UPI

    A federal judge in Texas denied a stay of execution Wednesday for a man convicted of killing a married couple two decades ago.

    Brandon Bernard, 40, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 10 at the U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Ind. He's one of several death row inmates to be scheduled for lethal injection this year after the U.S. Justice Department resumed federal executions this summer.

    U.S. District Judge Alan Albright of the Western District of Texas ruled Wednesday that he didn't have jurisdiction over Bernard's case and so denied a request for a stay.

    Bernard's lawyers requested the stay last month after saying they've discovered evidence showing their client had a lesser role in the crime and the gang that perpetrated the killings.

    "Brandon Bernard has been seeking relief since we discovered in 2018 that the trial prosecutors withheld critical evidence, yet procedural barriers have prevented him from obtaining a hearing on the merits of his claim," Robert Owen said.

    We will continue to make our case in court that this hidden evidence would have changed the outcome of Brandon's sentencing. Given that five jurors no longer stand by their death verdict, Brandon must not be executed until the courts have fully addressed the constitutionality of his sentence, and we will continue to vigorously pursue that vitally important goal."

    Defense lawyers accused the government of withholding evidence showing that Bernard was "on the very periphery of the youth gang" that killed the Texas couple. They said they found the evidence while reviewing court documents for the re-sentencing of one of Bernard's co-defendants, showing the information was in the government's possession.

    In addition to the stay, Bernard's lawyers asked for a hearing on the new evidence.

    Bernard, along with an accomplice, Christopher Vialva, were sentenced to death in 2000 for the 1999 deaths of Todd Bagley and Stacie Bagley, married youth ministers.

    Prosecutors said the Bagleys gave Vialva and two other accomplices in the case a ride in their car, but the men held the couple at gunpoint and put them in the trunk of the vehicle. They stole the couple's money and a wedding ring.

    Bernard's lawyers said he was not with the three accomplices when they kidnapped the Bagleys and was called to join the other perpetrators later in his own vehicle.

    The four men then drove the Bagleys and the two vehicles to Fort Hood Army base, where prosecutors said Vialva shot both victims in the head, instantly killing Todd Bagley. They then set the car on fire.

    Stacie Bagley, unconscious from a gunshot wound, died of smoke inhalation, federal prosecutors said.

    Defense lawyers said Bernard believed he was called to help dispose of the Bagley's vehicles and let them go free. Police arrested the four men after their vehicle slid off the road into a ditch near the Bagleys' burning vehicle.

    Because the murders took place on a military reservation, they were considered federal offenses.

    Vialva was executed for his role in September.

    In November, dozens of people -- including jurors from Bernard's trial -- signed a clemency petition asking President Donald Trump to commute his death sentence. The petition asked Trump to consider Bernard's age at the time of the crime -- 18 -- his clean prison record, his remorse and outreach work while incarcerated. They asked for his death sentence to be commuted to life in prison.

    Jury foreman Calvin Kruger said that while the trial evidence showed that Bernard is "guilty beyond any doubt" of the murders, "it also clearly showed that Brandon Bernard was not the ringleader behind these offenses, but a follower."

    He also said he didn't believe Bernard's attorney "did a good job in defending him."

    "To me, it seemed like his attorneys were going through the motions and nothing more."

    Two other jurors agreed with Kruger's assessment of the trial attorney.

    Mark Bezy, a former federal Bureau of Prisons warden, said he supports clemency because of Bernard's record of good conduct. He said that "should Bernard's death sentence be commuted, the could and would function exceptionally well in a less-restrictive environment without posing any risk to institutional security and good order, or posing any risk to the safety and security of staff, inmates or others."

    U.S. Attorney General William Barr resumed federal executions in July after a 17-year hiatus. Daniel Lewis Lee, Wesley Purkey and Dustin Honken were executed in July; Lezmond Mitchell and Keith Dwayne Nelson in August; William LeCroy and Vialva in September; and Orlando Hall in November.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.upi...6371606954423/

  7. #37
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Alfred's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2014
    Posts
    446
    I'm hearing Trump may fire Barr. If so, would that impact these executions?

  8. #38
    Senior Member Member FLMetfan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2013
    Location
    Ponte Vedra Florida
    Posts
    175
    I cannot see how. I doubt Barr is going anywhere
    "I am the warden! Get your warden off this gurney and shut up! You are not in America. This is the island of Barbados. People will see you doing this." Monty Delk's last words.

  9. #39
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2015
    Location
    New Jersey, unfortunately
    Posts
    4,382
    I was wondering too. I don't think so because there will be an acting AG and the Solicitor General will remain.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  10. #40
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
    Location
    Tennessee
    Posts
    7,316
    Bernard filed a petition for writ of certiorari and for a stay of execution to SCOTUS yesterday

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....c/20-6570.html
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

Page 4 of 8 FirstFirst ... 23456 ... LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •