CHRISTOPHER VIALVA EXECUTED FOR THE 1999 MURDER OF TEXAS COUPLE (SEPTEMBER 24, 2020)

On this date, September 24, 2020, Christopher Vialva was executed in U.S. prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, by the US Federal Government. He was convicted of the 1999 murders of Texas Couple, Todd and Stacie Bagley in 1999.

Christopher Vialva, 40, is set to receive the death penalty on Thursday at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was convicted 20 years ago for the 1999 murders of two youth ministers

Christopher Vialva executed for 1999 murder of Texas couple, the seventh federal execution since July

Michael Tarm

Associated Press

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — A man who killed a religious couple visiting Texas from Iowa was executed Thursday, the first Black inmate put to death as part of the Trump administration's resumption of federal executions.

Christopher Vialva, 40, was pronounced dead at 6:42 p.m. EDT after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

He was 19 years old in 1999 when he shot Todd and Stacie Bagley and burned them in the trunk of their car. Vialva's lawyer, Susan Otto, has said race played a role in landing her client on death row for slaying the white couple.

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. 

In the video statement released his lawyers released Thursday, Vialva expressed regret for what he'd done and said he was a changed man.

"I committed a grave wrong when I was a lost kid and took two precious lives from this world," he said. "Every day, I wish I could right this wrong."

Vialva's mother, Lisa Brown, spoke at an anti-death penalty rally Thursday morning across from the prison where her son was later put to death.

"This is the first venue I've had in which I could say to Todd and Stacie's family, I am so sorry for your loss," said Brown, who was expected to witness her son's execution.

Federal authorities executed just three prisoners in the previous 56 years. Death penalty foes accuse President Donald Trump of restarting them to help stake a claim as the law-and-order candidate. 

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

  

 

A portrait of Stacie and Todd Bagley on the tombstone of Stacie Bagley’s grave in Dyersburg, Tenn., on Sept. 18, 2020.

According to court filings, the Bagleys were on their way home from a Sunday worship service during a visit to Texas when Vialva and his teenage accomplices asked them for a lift after they stopped at a convenience store — planning all along to rob the couple.

After the Bagleys agreed and began driving away, Vialva pulled out a gun and told the couple: "Plans have changed."

After stealing their money, jewelry and ATM card, the teens locked the Bagleys in the trunk of their car as they drove around for hours trying to withdraw money from ATMs and seeking to pawn Stacie Bagley's wedding ring. The Bagleys pleaded for their lives from the trunk.

The teens eventually pulled to the side of the road and poured lighter fluid inside the car. As they did, the Bagleys sang "Jesus loves us" in the trunk. Vialva, the oldest of the group, donned a ski mask, opened the trunk and shot the Bagleys in the head. Stacie Bagley, prosecutors said at trial, was still alive as flames engulfed the car.

Questions about racial bias in the criminal justice system have been front and center since protests erupted across the country following the death of George Floyd  after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on the handcuffed Black man's neck for several minutes.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg becomes first woman to lie in state:8 other strides she made for women

A report this month by the Washington, D.C.-based 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% — are Black, according to center data updated Wednesday; 22, or nearly 40%, are white and seven, around 12% were Latino. There is one Asian on federal death row. Black people make up only about 13% of the population.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/09/24/christopher-vialva-black-man-death-row-lawyer-argues-racial-bias/3519379001/

   

Todd and Stacie Bagley, left and right, were murdered by Christopher Andre Vialva

OTHER LINKS:

'I believe when someone deliberately takes the life of another, they suffer the consequences for their actions, Todd Bagley´s mother, Georgia, wrote in a statement released after the execution.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8770649/Feds-Black-inmate-death-execution-restart.html

A portrait of Stacie and Todd Bagley on the tombstone of Stacie Bagley’s grave in Dyersburg, Tenn., on Sept. 18, 2020.

https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/3145401272248484

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/20/federal-executions-christopher-vialva/

Candlelight for the two victims

https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/3152501258205152

https://www.facebook.com/LifesparkJustice/photos/a.2060617870925244/2738535539800137/

https://wikispro.com/christopher-vialva-wiki-bio-age/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/122251488/todd-bagley

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/30076708/stacie-lynn-bagley

 

WITCHCRAFT OBSESSED KILLER, WILLIAM EMMETT LECROY EXECUTED (SEPTEMBER 22, 2020)

            On this date, September 22, 2020, William Emmett LeCroy was executed in U.S. prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, by the US Federal Government. He was convicted of the 2001 murder of Georgia nurse, Joann Lee Tiesler.

William Emmett LeCroy, 50, (pictured) is the sixth federal inmate executed by lethal injection this year at the U.S. prison in Terre Haute, Indiana

 

US government executes killer obsessed with witchcraft

By MICHAEL TARM today

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — The U.S. government on Tuesday executed a former soldier who said an obsession with witchcraft led him to kill a Georgia nurse he believed had put a spell on him.

William Emmett LeCroy, 50, was pronounced dead at 9:06 p.m. EDT after receiving a lethal injection at the same U.S. prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where five others have been executed in 2020 following a 17-year period without a federal execution.

Lawyers had asked President Donald Trump in a petition to commute LeCroy’s sentence to life in prison, saying that LeCroy’s brother, Georgia State Trooper Chad LeCroy, was killed during a routine traffic stop in 2010 and that another son’s death would devastate their family.

The execution began nearly three hours later than scheduled as LeCroy’s lawyers made an ultimately failed, last-minute bid to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a stay.

As a curtain rose across glass windows separating witnesses from the death chamber, LeCroy lay strapped to a cross-shaped gurney, with IVs in his forearms and hands. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the ceiling, not turning to look toward witnesses. The witnesses included the father and fiancé of Joann Lee Tiesler, whom LeCroy raped and stabbed to death 19 years ago, Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec said in a statement.

LeCroy’s spiritual adviser, Sister Barbara Battista, stood a few feet away inside the chamber, her head bowed and reading softly from a prayer book.

LeCroy had said last week he didn’t want to play into what he called the “theater” surrounding his execution and so might not make a full statement in the minutes before he died, Battista told The Associated Press earlier Tuesday.

When a prison official leaned over him Tuesday night and gently pulled off LeCroy’s face mask to ask if he had any last words, LeCroy responded calmly and matter-of-factly. His last and only words were: “Sister Battista is about to receive in the postal service my last statement.”

LeCroy kept his eyes open as someone out of his view in an adjacent room began administering the lethal injection of pentobarbital. His eyelids grew heavy while his midsection began to heave uncontrollably. After several more minutes, color drained from his limbs, his face turned ashen and his lips tinted blue. After about 10 more minutes, an official with a stethoscope entered the chamber, felt LeCroy’s wrist for a pulse and then listened to his heart before officially declaring him dead.

Another execution, of Christopher Vialva, is scheduled Thursday. He would be the first African American on federal death row to be put to death in the series of federal executions this year.

Critics say the Justice Department’s resumption of federal executions this year is a cynical bid to help Trump claim the mantel of law-and-order candidate leading up to Election Day. Supporters say Trump is bringing long-overdue justice to victims and their families.

LeCroy broke into the Cherrylog, Georgia, mountain home of Joann Lee Tiesler on Oct. 7, 2001, and waited for her to return from a shopping trip. When she walked through the door, LeCroy struck her with a shotgun, bound and raped her. He then slashed her throat and repeatedly stabbed her in the back.

LeCroy had known Tiesler because she lived near a relative’s home and would often wave to her as he drove by. He later told investigators he’d come to believe she might have been his old babysitter he called Tinkerbell, who LeCroy claimed sexually molested him as a child. After killing Tiesler, he realized that couldn’t possibly be true.

Two days after killing Tiesler, LeCroy was arrested driving Tiesler’s truck after passing a U.S. checkpoint in Minnesota heading to Canada.

Authorities found a note LeCroy wrote before his arrest in which he asked Tiesler for forgiveness, according to court filings. “You were an angel and I killed you,” it read. “

William Emmett LeCroy, left, and nurse Joann Lee Tiesler Credit: CNN

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://7news.com.au/news/crime/witchcraft-obsessed-killer-william-emmett-lecroy-executed-in-us-19-years-after-crime-c-1338147]

     

“Today justice was finally served. William LeCroy died a peaceful death in stark contrast to the horror he imposed on my daughter Joann,” the victim’s father, Tom Tiesler, said in a statement.

“I am unaware that he ever showed any remorse for his evil actions, his life of crime or for the horrific burden he caused Joann’s loved ones,” the statement read.

A few hours before the execution, Battista, waiting near the prison, held a bag of caramel chocolate that she said was LeCroy’s favorite. In conversations with him in the days leading up to the execution, she said he had been contemplating his likely death and sounded resigned.

“He said, ‘You know, once we were not and then we are and then we are not,’” she said. “He was reflective. He didn’t seem agitated.”

LeCroy joined the Army at 17 but was soon was discharged for going AWOL and later spoke about an interest in witchcraft that began during a previous stint in prison for burglary, child molestation and other charges.

He had ruminated for days before the slaying about how Tiesler was Tinkerbell and that assaulting her would reverse a hex she put on him. After he cut her throat, he went to Tiesler’s computer to search for books about witchcraft, court filings said.

He was convicted in 2004 on a federal charge of carjacking resulting in death and a jury recommended a death sentence.

LeCroy’s lawyers had unsuccessfully tried to halt the execution and argued that his trial lawyers didn’t properly emphasize evidence about his upbringing and mental health that could have persuaded jurors not to impose a death sentence. Their last-minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was also rejected.

Over previous 56 years, before the Trump administration’s reboot of executions this year, the federal government had executed just three people — all in the early 2000s. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was among them.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://apnews.com/ad069e143126b4abb8ac65a1482cb13a

OTHER LINKS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offenders_executed_in_the_United_States_in_2020

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8761553/US-execution-planned-killer-said-witchcraft-drove-him.html

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/169020247/joann-lee-tiesler

“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law - and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.” – William Barr

https://7news.com.au/news/crime/witchcraft-obsessed-killer-william-emmett-lecroy-executed-in-us-19-years-after-crime-c-1338147

William Emmett LeCroy, 50, was pronounced dead at 9:06 p.m. via lethal injection at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana — the same facility where five other inmates have been executed this year. LeCroy was found guilty of murdering Joann Lee Tiesler on Oct. 7, 2001.

https://nypost.com/2020/09/23/feds-execute-man-who-claimed-witchcraft-led-him-to-murder/