Trump plans to execute Black death-row inmates before he leaves office

By Stacy M. Brown

NNPA Newswire 

Senior National Correspondent

@StacyBrownMedia

Before this year, no federal execution had taken place since 2003. However, in July, Attorney General William Barr, at the behest of President Donald Trump, resumed federal executions.

Since then, eight people have been executed.

Before Trump leaves office next month, three more death row inmates are set to be executed. Four of them are African Americans. If the remaining executions move forward as planned, Trump will leave office with the distinct legacy of being the most lethally prolific president (in terms of federal executions) in more than 130 years.

While many have surmised that the current pandemic’s death toll could have been lessened if more effective and swifter action had been taken by this president and his administration, those numbers can only be estimated.

Conversely, Trump and Barr have executed about 25 percent of all death-row prisoners and, according to a recent interview with the Associated Press, the Attorney General has not only defended the pace of execution but pledged to do more before he leaves the Justice Department.

Revelations of the executions have come with a few surprises: Trump and Barr’s Justice Department have recently updated protocols to allow for federal executions by poison gas and firing squad.

Brandon Bernard, a Black man who was an accomplice in a crime as a teen and received little help from attorneys during his 1999 criminal trial, was killed on Dec. 10. In a cruel twist of irony, Dec. 10 is also International Human Rights Day.

Bernard was just 18 when his crime occurred. Convicted as an accomplice in Texas, Bernard wasn’t the triggerman.

Bernard’s lawyers failed to present opening arguments during his criminal trial and didn’t call any witnesses. He had languished on death row since 2000. He’s was 40.

Had the crime occurred just a couple of months earlier, Bernard would not have been eligible for the death penalty.

In a mea culpa op-ed written last month in the Indianapolis Star, Angela Moore, the former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas who prosecuted Bernard, said “people tend to view Black boys, like Brandon, as more blameworthy than their White counterparts, even where other relevant circumstances are identical.”

Indeed, one study showed that Black boys are misperceived as older relative to other races’ peers, Moore said, citing her research.

“Black teens like Brandon are systematically denied the ‘benefit’ of their youth, which is outweighed by their race in the eyes of the police, prosecutors, judges, and jurors,” Moore wrote. “Through time and experience, I have come to appreciate that a teenager who takes part in committing a terrible crime may transform over the years into a thoughtful adult. 

“From everything I have read, it appears that Brandon is just such a person – someone who, even in prison, has maintained rich relationships with his loved ones and worked to find meaning in his life by helping at-risk teenagers avoid a criminal path.”

Remarkably, in two decades of incarceration, Brandon has never been disciplined for a single violation of prison rules.”

Even the jurors who convicted him wrote favorably of Bernard, asking that Trump commute his sentence. Celebrity Kim Kardashian also had requested that Trump spares Bernard’s life.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

Last Friday, Alfred Bourgeois, who had been on death row in Indiana for 17 years, was executed. Cory Johnson was expected to face the same fate last Monday in Indiana.

The sole White person facing execution is a woman, Lisa Montgomery. By all accounts, she is a severely mentally ill woman in Missouri who suffered as a sexual abuse victim for most of her life. Montgomery’s execution is scheduled for Jan. 12, 2021.

On January 15 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Dustin Higgs will be executed if there isn’t a last-minute stay of execution ordered by an administration many have described as bereft of empathy and compassion as well as racist.

Prosecutors claimed Higgs bullied Willie Haynes into three murders, but a 2012 affidavit signed by Haynes called the government’s position “bull-t.” Multiple witnesses, including Higgs’ co-defendant, Willis Haynes, have maintained that Higgs killed no one. “Dustin didn’t threaten me,” Haynes wrote. “I was not scared of him. Dustin didn’t make me do anything that night or ever.”

On a website bearing his name, Higgs is pleading for mercy.

“I’m currently sitting on death row for a crime I didn’t commit. I wonder if it’s that I’m not yelling loud enough or is it that the blatant miscarriage of justice of me being killed for a crime I’m certainly innocent of really doesn’t matter,” Higgs writes on www.savedustinhiggs.com.