System Stacked Against Condemned Inmate, Other Black Defendants, Lawyers Say

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Demonstrators gathered across from the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind., to protest the death penalty. Another execution is scheduled for Thursday.





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Judge Refers Prosecutors For Possible DOJ Investigation In Rebuke Over Botched Case

«There have been over 500 cases between 1988 and now where the attorney general of the United States authorized federal prosecutors to seek death and in over two-thirds of those cases, the defendant was either Black or Latinx and in only about a quarter of the cases was the defendant white, Spital said.

Spital said the race of the victim also matters a lot: defendants who kill white people are 17 times more likely to be executed.

«This is a prime example of how the federal death penalty is replicating all the same unconstitutional and discriminatory flaws in the state system, he said.

Otto said she once believed the federal system, which guarantees multiple lawyers for the accused, represented a gold standard. Then, she took on the Vialva case.

When Otto got his case file, in 2003, she remembered her reaction.





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The federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind. A wave of federal executions by the Trump administration have resumed after a 17-year hiatus.





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Barr Blasts His Own Prosecutors: ‘All Power Is Vested In The Attorney General’

When they protested, years later, to the trial judge, he rejected their appeal and limited the legal arguments they could make to higher courts. Eventually, the new legal team discovered that the trial judge had suffered acute symptoms of alcoholism and had made «inappropriate and unwanted sexual advances to a court employee, resulting in his suspension from hearing new cases for a year.

But appeals courts weren’t convinced that the judge’s problems played any role in the Vialva case. That left Vialva with no options and on track for execution.

«I tell you that this case has shaken my faith in some of the principles I have believed in and practiced, Otto said.

NPR reached out to friends and relatives of the Bagleys but did not get a response in time for publication. Families of murder victims are divided on the issue of capital punishment, even among themselves, said Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, president of the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Murderers.



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Former prosecutor Charles «Cully Stimson says his sympathy goes out to the victims of these crimes and their families.

«It’s justice delayed, but it’s about time, said Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation who has written books about crime and punishment.

Stimson pointed out that federal prosecutors who seek capital punishment undergo multiple layers of review inside the Justice Department, and that most defendants get access to ethical and competent lawyers once they reach the courts.

«Until Congress eliminates the death penalty for select crimes and states abolish it, we’re going to have it for a small number of cases where the punishment is deserved in the eyes of many juries, he said.