Determined to carry out executions until the last days of his mandate, the government of Donald Trump carried out a new lethal injection on Thursday, December 10, ignoring calls for clemency and the outbreak of Covid-19 among the executioners.
Brandon Bernard, a 40-year-old African-American, was executed for participating in a double murder in 1999 in Texas, when he was just over 18.
Read also: Seventh federal execution in three months in the United States
Half a million people had signed petitions asking the Republican president to commute his sentence to life imprisonment, highlighting in particular the immaturity of Brandon Bernard at the time of the crime and his good behavior in prison.
"At 18 years and a few months, his brain had not finished developing,"
notably pleaded reality star Kim Kardashian.
With other young people, he had taken part in the kidnapping of a couple of white pastors, then shot and burned in his car.
Some of the attackers were under 17 and escaped the death penalty.
Two have already been released from prison.
But the perpetrator, Christopher Vialva, 19 at the time, and Brandon Bernard, who set the vehicle on fire, were sentenced to death in 2000 by a federal court because the crime had taken place on military terrain.
The first received a lethal injection in September at Terre-Haute Penitentiary, Indiana.
The second suffered the same fate Thursday evening after the rejection by the Supreme Court of a final appeal.
“Brandon's execution is a stain on the US justice system,”
his lawyer said in a statement.
"Brandon made a terrible mistake at the age of 18 but
...
he never ceased to feel shame and deep remorse for his actions."
Donald Trump "is already breaking records of executions, he has no reason to continue, apart from annoyance.
"
Abraham Bonowitz, activist against the death penalty
This is the ninth federal execution since July, after the practice was put on hold for 17 years.
Despite Donald Trump's presidential defeat - which he refuses to recognize - his government has planned four more executions by the January 20 swearing-in of Democrat Joe Biden, opposed to federal executions.
For 131 years, however, the tradition has been that outgoing presidents postpone executions pending the arrival of their successors.
"The government is not at all in tune with the approach"
of its predecessors, since there have only been three federal executions in the past 45 years, notes Ngozi Ndulue, research director at the Center d ' information on the death penalty (DPIC).
Read also: In the United States, the death penalty is declining but continues to divide
It is just as
"out of step"
vis-à-vis developments in the country, where new death sentences and support for the death penalty are at historic lows, she adds.
But above all, she notes,
"he stubbornly pursues executions in the midst of a global pandemic, it's startling
.
"
The Covid-19 is raging in the United States, where more than 3,000 people died from the virus in a single day on Wednesday, and 2,900 more on Thursday, with a total death toll in the country at more than 290,000 deaths.
Faced with the health risk, even the states most attached to the death penalty, such as Texas, have suspended executions.
The government of Donald Trump, he persists although six members of the team of executioners who participated in the last federal execution were diagnosed positive for the new coronavirus in the following week, as the spiritual advisor of the condemned.
In this context, more and more voices - editorialists, UN experts, Catholic bishops ... - condemn his stubbornness.
"Our officials are just trying to score political points
,
"
said Thursday Gary Witte, a priest who came to demonstrate in front of the Department of Justice in Washington against this
"lack of humanity"
.
Donald Trump
"is already breaking records of executions, he has no reason to continue, apart
from annoyance
"
, added one of the organizers, Abraham Bonowitz, 53 years old.
All these convicts have committed
“horrible crimes”
, retorts the Minister of Justice Bill Barr, who assures himself to limit himself to
“applying the sentences declared by the courts”
.