https://news.yahoo.com/u-set-execute-brandon-bernard-200824807.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=2_15
U.S. executes Brandon Bernard despite 11th-hour appeals
Brandon Bernard, who was 18 when he took part in a 1999 double murder in Texas, was killed by lethal injection at a federal prison Thursday, despite eleventh-hour attempts for court intervention.
The case drew renewed interest in recent weeks and sparked debate about whether the death penalty is a necessary punishment for someone who was barely a legal adult at the time of the crime. Bernard, who was 40 when he was executed, was the youngest person, based on his age when the offense occurred, in nearly seven decades to be put to death by the federal government.
The Supreme Court denied a request for an emergency stay Thursday night, and Bernard was pronounced dead at 9:27 p.m.
In the moments before his death, a calm Bernard spoke directly to the family of the couple he killed. "I'm sorry," he said. "That's the only words that I can say that completely capture how I feel now and how I felt that day."
Bernard's attorney called the execution "a stain on America's criminal justice system."
"Brandon made one terrible mistake at age 18," said the lawyer, Robert C. Owen. "But he did not kill anyone, and he never stopped feeling shame and profound remorse for his actions in the crime that took the lives of Todd and Stacie Bagley. And he spent the rest of his life sincerely trying to show, as he put it, that he 'was not that person.'"
Bernard was the ninth person put to death by the federal government this year after the Justice Department resumed executions in July after a 17-year hiatus on the federal level.
This year, fear over the spread of the coronavirus in prisons has largely led states to put holds on executions. But the surging numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths in recent months have not deterred the federal government from acting in the final weeks of Donald Trump's presidency.
