[ad_1]
HIGH EARTH, Ind. – Man convicted of kidnapping and raping a 16-year-old Texan girl before spraying her with gasoline and burying her alive was executed Thursday, the eighth federal inmate to be put to death this year after a close hiatus two decades. .
Orlando Hall, 49, was pronounced dead at 11:47 p.m. ET after receiving a fatal injection at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. In his final words, Hall invited others to Islam, thanked those who supported him, and sought to reassure them by saying, “I’m fine.” After reading a statement recounting his crimes, Hall took one last opportunity to turn to his supporters and say, “Take care of yourself.” Tell my children that I love them.
The late-night execution came after the Supreme Court dismissed last-minute legal challenges from Hall’s attorneys, who argued that racial bias played a role in his conviction and also raised concerns about the protocol of execution and other constitutional matters.
As the drug was administered, Hall lifted his head, seemed to wince briefly, and winced his feet. He seemed to mumble to himself and twice opened his mouth wide, as if yawning. Each time, this was followed by short and apparently labored breaths. He then stopped breathing and soon after, an official with a stethoscope entered the execution chamber to check for a heartbeat before Hall was officially declared dead.
Before the Trump administration resumed federal executions this year, only three federal inmates had been executed in the previous 56 years. Two more executions are slated for later this year – though a judge said on Thursday that one could not be carried out until the end of the year – and President-elect Joe Biden has not said whether the Federal executions would continue when he takes office.
Hall was among five men sentenced for the kidnapping and death of Lisa Rene in 1994.
According to Federal Court documents, Hall was a marijuana dealer in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, who occasionally purchased his drugs in the Dallas area. He arrived in Dallas on September 24, 1994, met two men at a car wash, and gave them $ 4,700, hoping they would come back with the marijuana later. The two men were René’s brothers.
Instead, the men claimed their car and the money was stolen in a theft. Hall and his accomplices thought they were lying and were able to track down the address of the brothers’ apartment in Arlington, Texas.
When Hall and three other men arrived at the apartment, the brothers weren’t there. Lisa Rene was at home alone.
“She was studying for an exam and had her textbooks on the couch when these guys came knocking on the front door,” said retired Arlington Detective John Stanton Sr.
In a statement issued by prison officials, her older sister, Pearl Rene, said that the execution “marks the end of a very long and painful chapter in our lives.”
“My family and I are very relieved that this is over. We have been dealing with this for 26 years and now we have to relive the tragic nightmare that our beloved Lisa went through, ”she said. “Ending this painful process will be a major goal for our family. This is only the end of the legal consequences. The execution of Orlando Hall will never stop the suffering we continue to endure. “
The court records offer a chilling tale of the terror her sister faced.
“They are trying to break down my door! Hurry! ”The victim told a 911 dispatcher. A muffled scream was heard seconds later, a man saying,“ Who are you on the phone with? ”The line then went down.
Stanton said the men smashed a sliding glass door to get inside and immediately took off with René. The police arrived within minutes, but the men and Rene were already gone, said Stanton, still wincing at the thought of foiling the crime as it began.
“It was one that I will never forget,” Stanton said. “This one was particularly heinous.”
The men drove to a motel in Pine Bluff. René was sexually assaulted several times during the drive and at the motel over the next two days.
On September 26, Hall and two other men led René to the Lake Byrd Natural Area in Pine Bluff, with their eyes covered by a mask. They led her to a grave they had dug a day earlier. Hall placed a sheet over René’s head and then hit her on the head with a shovel. When she ran another man and Hall took turns hitting her with the shovel before she was gagged and dragged into the grave, where she was sprayed with gasoline before the dirt was deposited on her.
A coroner has determined that René was still alive when she was buried and died of asphyxiation in the grave, where she was found eight days later.
Crossing the Texas-Arkansas line made the case a federal crime. One of Hall’s accomplices, Bruce Webster, was also sentenced to death, but the sentence was overturned last year due to his intellectual disability. Three other men, including Hall’s brother, received lesser sentences in return for their cooperation in the trial.
Hall’s lawyers say jurors recommending the death penalty were not told about the severe trauma he suffered as a child or that he once saved a 3-year-old nephew from drowning by jumping in a motel pool from a balcony.
Donna Keogh, 67, first met Hall 16 years ago when she and other volunteers from her Catholic church set up a program to provide Christmas gifts to children of inmates at Terre Prison High. They corresponded by email until a few days before his death.
Keogh said Hall has two sons, aged 28 and 27, and 13 grandchildren.
Hall changed his life in prison, educating himself and becoming an avid reader, Keogh said. She couldn’t understand the value of performing it.
“My faith tells me that all life is precious and that includes lives on death row,” Keogh said. “I just don’t see any purpose.”
Hall’s attorney, Marcy Widder, issued a statement after the execution: “Tonight the federal government took the life of a man who has spent the past quarter of a century repenting for his role in death of Lisa Rene and striving every day to be a better father, brother, son and human in honor of her memory. The world was not made a better place because of his death; on the contrary, we are all diminished by our government’s ruthless desire to kill and by its devaluation of hope and redemption.
Five of the first six federal executions this year involved white men; the other was Navajo. Christopher Vialva, who was black, was put to death on September 24 for killing an Iowa couple on their way to Texas in 1999.
Critics have argued that the execution of white detainees was primarily a political calculation in a country embroiled in racial prejudice involving the criminal justice system.
Black people remain overrepresented on death row, including federal death row, according to a September report released by the Washington, DC-based Death Penalty Information Center. The organization’s database shows that 25 of 55 federal death row inmates (46%) are black, while blacks make up only about 13% of the U.S. population.
[ad_2]
Source link