TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — The lawyer for the first Black inmate scheduled to die this year as part of the Trump administration’s resumption of federal executions says race played a central role in landing her client on death row for slaying a young white Iowa couple and burning them in the trunk of their car.
One Black juror and 11 white jurors heard the 2000 federal case in Texas against Christopher Vialva, who is now 40 but was 19 at the time of the killings. Prosecutors portrayed Vialva as the leader of a Black street-gang faction and alleged he killed the deeply religious husband and wife, Todd and Stacie Bagley, to boost his status within the gang, attorney Susan Otto said.
But Otto contends there was no evidence Vialva, scheduled to be put to death Thursday, was even a full-fledged member — let alone a leader — of the 212 PIRU Bloods gang in his Killeen, Texas hometown. She said the false claim only served to conjure up menacing stereotypes to prejudice the nearly all-white jury.
“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. She added: “Race was a very strong component of this case.”
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.
The Trump administration restarted federal executions this year after a 17-year pause, executing six inmates since July at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana — the most recent on Tuesday. Five of the first six were white, a move critics argue was a political calculation to avoid uproar. The sixth was Navajo.
A report this month by the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center said Blacks remain overrepresented on death rows and that Blacks who kill whites are far more likely to be sentenced to death than whites who kill Blacks.
The focus of the report was on state death penalty cases, but the center’s director, Robert Dunham, said Wednesday there was ample proof the same problems exist at the federal level.
“The racial issues are the same as they are in state courts,” he said. “The federal system is not the gold standard for fair processes.”
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. Blacks make up only about 13% of the population.
Dunham says poor record keeping on federal and state death penalty cases makes it difficult to fully assess how much of role race plays. Higher numbers of homicides in some minority areas, he said, also complicates analyses of death row disparities.
But he said studies have consistently demonstrated that race is a factor — to the determinant of Black defendants.
Vialva’s lawyers neither dispute the brutality of the crime nor his involvement in it.
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 Bagley’s 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…
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