Black man executed over murder of white couple after lawyer says he was victim of racial stereotyping

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox

Get our free Inside Washington email

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

The United States has put a black inmate to death for the first time in two decades, as the Trump administration’s resumption of federal executions continues.

Christopher Vialva, aged 40, was pronounced dead on Thursday night, having been injected with a lethal substance at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Viala, who was charged with murdering a white couple in 2000, had asked God in his last statement to comfort the families of his victim’s families, saying, "Father . heal their hearts with grace and love."

After turning towards his mother behind a glass window, Vialva's final words were: "I'm ready, Father”, reported The Associated Press.

In the 1999 murder of Todd and Stacie Bagley, the then 19-year-old robbed and locked them in the trunk of their car, before shooting them in the head and burning their bodies.

But amid renewed attention on the racial injustices of the United States’ criminal justice system, Viala’s lawyer said recently that her client had been a victim of racial stereotyping.

Speaking in a recent phone interview, Susan Otto said one Black juror and 11 white jurors who recommended the death sentence in 2000, had done so after prosecutors told them Vialva led a Black gang faction in Killeen, Texas, and killed to boost his gang status.

That claim, Ms Otto said, was false and only served to conjure up menacing stereotypes.

"It played right into the narrative that he was a dangerous Black thug who killed these lovely white people. And they were lovely," she said in a recent phone interview.

The death follows George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police in May, and that of Breonna Taylor by Louisville police in March, in two cases that have ignited demonstrations over racial biases.

Speaking on Thursday, the civil rights lawyer representing Taylor’s family,  Benjamin Crump, argued that “sham proceedings” handed officers involved in her death charges of wanton endangerment, a lesser charge than murder.  

“We seem to have two justice systems in America, one for Black America and one for white America,” said Mr Crump.

A report earlier this month by the Death Penalty Information Center said Black people remain overrepresented on death rows and that Black people who kill white people are far more likely to be sentenced to death than white people who kill Black people.

Of the 56 inmates currently on federal death row, 26 — or nearly 50 per cent — are Black, according to center data, despite representing 13.4 per cent of the overall US population, according to the last census.