US to carry out 8th execution of the year tonight despite Biden’s opposition to death penalty

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The US government will carry out its eighth execution this year and is planning three more before Joe Biden is sworn in as president.

The president-elect has signalled his opposition to federal executions and is expected to end them after his inauguration in January.

Orlando Hall is set to die by lethal injection at the US Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, on Thursday for the kidnapping, rape of Lisa Rene, who was buried alive.

Hall, 49, has spent 25 years on death row following his conviction for the murder of Ms Rene, who was killed after her brothers stole $4,700 during a drug deal.

Prosecutors said that Hall and four other men, who were involved in marijuana trafficking, drove from Arkansas to Arlington, Texas, to confront the brothers.

When they found their 16-year-old sister at home they took her at gunpoint back to Arkansas where she was raped, beaten unconscious and buried alive in a park.

Hall’s will be the first lame-duck execution in more than 100 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. 

The last came in 1889, during the first presidency of Grover Cleveland, when Richard Smith, a member of the Chocktaw tribe, was executed in Arkansas for a murder committed in Indian Territory.

The District of Columbia US circuit court of appeals refused to intervene in the execution despite injunctions to block federal executions.

The 7th circuit court of appeals rejected his lawyer’s claims that his conviction was tainted by racial discrimination.

Hall, who never denied involvement in the killing, is Black and was convicted by an all-white jury.

But his lawyers say that the jury would not have sentenced him to death of they knew “key facts” about the case.

Three of the other men signed plea deals that gave them prison time for testifying against Hall and Bruce Webster, and have already been released.

If the execution goes ahead Hall would be the eighth person killed by the federal government since the Justice Department resumed executions in July after a 17 year pause.

Before that only three people had been executed by the federal government in the previous 50 years.