Thursday, September 24, 2020
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — The U.S. government has put the first Black inmate to death since the Trump administration this year resumed federal executions after a nearly two-decade pause.
Christopher Vialva, 40, was pronounced dead shortly before 6 p.m. CDT today. He was convicted and sentenced to death in the slaying of a religious couple visiting Texas from Iowa when Vialva was 19.
Vialva was the seventh federal execution since July and the second this week. Five of the first six were white, a move critics argue was a political calculation to avoid uproar. The sixth was Navajo. Vialva’s lawyer, Susan Otto, has said race played a role in landing her client on death row in the 1999 killings of Todd and Stacie Bagley, who were white.