A convicted murderer was put to death on Thursday as President Donald Trump’s administration pushes ahead with executions of criminals, despite a tradition of outgoing governments refraining from the practice.
Orlando Hall, whose trial was tainted by racism according to his lawyers, was killed at an Indiana jail. Mr. Hall, an African American, was convicted in 1995 of participating in the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl, Lisa Rene, and received a death sentence.
He was executed on Thursday night by an injection of pentobarbital in a federal jail after the Supreme Court rejected his last-minute appeal for a stay.
A statement on the DOJ website said: “Today, Orlando Cordia Hall was executed at US Penitentiary Terre Haute in accordance with the capital sentence unanimously recommended by a federal jury and imposed by the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas in 1996. Hall was pronounced dead at 11:47 pm EST.”
The decision was the first by Trump-appointee Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who sided with her five conservative colleagues on the nine-judge bench to greenlight the execution.
