TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — 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 at 6:42 p.m. EDT on Thursday. He was convicted and sentenced to death in the slaying a religious couple visiting Fort Hood, 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.
