Judges halt executions of 2 inmates
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — A federal judge halted the scheduled execution Thursday of a man convicted of kidnapping and raping a 16yearold Texas girl, bludgeoning her with a shovel and burying her alive.
The ruling was handed down just hours before Orlando Hall was scheduled to die by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. He would have been the eighth federal inmate put to death since the Trump administration resumed federal executions this year after a pause of nearly two decades without one.
Hall, now 49, was among five men convicted in the abduction and death of Lisa Rene in 1994 in Arlington, Texas.
Earlier Thursday, U. S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington ruled that the U. S. government must delay until next year the first execution of a female federal inmate in almost six decades after her attorneys contracted the coronavirus visiting her in prison. Lisa Montgomery had been scheduled to be put to death on Dec. 8.
Montgomery was convicted of killing 23yearold Bobbie Jo Stinnett in the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore in December 2004, using a rope to strangle Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, and then using a kitchen knife to cut the baby girl from the womb, authorities said.
U. S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said Hall’s execution must be put on hold as the court weighs constitutional questions raised by his attorneys, including concerns over the federal Bureau of Prisons’ protocols for executions.
“The court is deeply concerned that the government intends to proceed with a method of execution that this court and the Court of Appeals have found violates federal law,” Chutkan wrote in the decision.
Less than an hour after the order was handed down, the Justice Department filed an immediate appeal with a federal appeals court in Washington. Separately, another appeal in Hall’s case is making its way through the Supreme Court.
Hall’s lawyers have also argued that bias played a role in his death sentence; Hall is Black, and his sentence was recommended by an allwhite jury. His lawyers also contend that restrictions and concerns related to the COVID19 pandemic have limited their ability to help him.
The Congressional Black Caucus sent a letter Thursday to Attorney General William Barr, citing concerns about the virus in urging a stay of execution. The letter stated that the virus “will make any scheduled execution a tinderbox for further outbreaks and exacerbate concerns over the possibility of miscarriage of justice.”
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 Sept. 24.
A recent report by the Washington, D. C. based Death Penalty Information Center said Black people remain overrepresented on death rows, including federal death row. 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.