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US Federal Prison in Terre Haute
Photo: BRYAN WOOLSTON / REUTERS
The convicted murderer Orlando Hall has briefly been executed in the United States.
He was killed by lethal injection in an Indiana prison, the US Department of Justice said.
Donald Trump's administration broke an old tradition: normally, outgoing governments hold back from a change of power in executions that are carried out at the federal level.
Hall was found guilty of involvement in the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl the previous year and sentenced to death in 1995.
According to his lawyers, the African American did not deny his involvement in the crime.
According to her information, the jury, which was only made up of whites, was not informed of his family background.
In addition, she was not allowed to hear Hall's confession of repentance and his apology to the family of the victim.
Conservative judges give the go-ahead for execution
Hall's death sentence was carried out after the Supreme Court dismissed Hall's appeal.
For the first time, the new constitutional judge Amy Coney Barrett was involved in such a decision.
The lawyer had taken the side of her five conservative colleagues and thus gave the green light for the execution.
Barrett was confirmed by Trump in October as the successor to the left-liberal constitutional judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Since then, the conservative camp has had a comfortable majority of six of the nine judge posts on the Supreme Court.
It was the eighth execution since the summer to have been carried out at the federal level.
According to a decision by the Supreme Court, death sentences at the federal level were not carried out again until mid-July after a 17-year hiatus.
Break with 131 year old tradition
The execution of Hall runs counter to a 131-year tradition in the United States.
Accordingly, outgoing governments leave the responsibility for such controversial decisions to the new government.
Trump lost the presidential election on November 3rd to his Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
Trump's term of office ends January 20.
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