20 years after the verdict: black man executed in US prison

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Terre Haute Federal Prison, Indiana (archive image)

Photo: SCOTT OLSON / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP

For the first time in 17 years, the US has again executed a black man at the federal level.

The convicted murderer Christopher Vialva was executed in Terre Haute Federal Prison in the US state of Indiana, the Reuters news agency reported.

Accordingly, Vialva was declared dead at 6.46 p.m. (local time) after a dose of pentoborbital was administered.

In his last words, he was reportedly saying a prayer for the families of the Christian couple he killed in 1999.

Execution at a critical moment

According to Reuters, it was the seventh federal execution this year and the second in a week.

The execution of the death penalty had been suspended at the federal level for years, but US President Donald Trump had allowed it again.

According to Reuters, since Trump's resumption of execution, more people have been executed than all of his incidents combined up to 1963.

Accordingly, never since 1927 have so many death sentences been carried out within one year.

The execution of Vialvas comes at an explosive time.

Most recently, protests against police violence and racism escalated again in the city of Louisville, Kentucky - two police officers were gunshot wounds.

Blacks over-represented in executions

The occasion was a judicial decision in the case of the killed Afro-American Breonna Taylor.

Around six months after the fatal police shooting at Taylor in her own apartment, a court had indicted a police officer - albeit not with the fatal shots.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, blacks are significantly overrepresented in executions in the United States.

Around half of the people still on the federal authority's death list are black.

Blacks make up only 13 percent of the US population, according to Reuters.

Vialva was sentenced to death in 2000 by a jury made up of eleven whites and one black.

The execution of his accomplice, who is also black, has not yet been scheduled.

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