Orlando Hall is Executed after the Supreme Court Lifts Execution Stay

Orlando Hall, an inmate at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, was executed late last Thursday at 11:47 pm after six hours of a desperate appeals process. A district judge ordered a stay of executionstay of executionA stay of execution is a court order temporarily preventing a death sentence from being carried out. A stay postpones execution while a court considers a legal claim, appeal, or other proceeding and does not, by itself, overturn the conviction or death sentence.Read more →, but the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the stay, giving the green light for the execution to be carried out.

Hall Serves Death Sentence for 1994 Murder

Hall was one of five men convicted in the brutal abduction, rape, and murder of 16-year-old Texas teen Lisa Rene in 1994. In a drug-related deal gone wrong, Hall and the other men involved drove over to an apartment where they were seeking out their intended target. They did not find their target when they arrived. Instead, they found Renee home alone.

Renee was abducted and taken to a motel in Pine Bluff, where over the course of 48 hours, she was repeatedly sexually assaulted. After the assault, the teen was taken to Byrd Lake National Area in Pine Bluff, where Hall and his accomplices covered her eyes with a mask and took turns hitting her on the head with a shovel. She was then buried alive in a shallow grave.

According to the coroner report, Rene died of asphyxiation in the makeshift grave. Her body was found eight days later. Because the assault and murder took place between the Texas and Arkansas state lines, the case was tried as a federal crime.

Hall and Defense Argue Racial Discrimination Led To an Unfair Trial

Attorneys for Hall sent in a flurry of last-minute appeals noting that Hall was not given a fair trial. His attorneys argued systematic racial discrimination and that protocol in the federal execution was unconstitutional.

On November 12, Hall's defense filed pleadings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. The pleadings highlighted racial discrimination in the sense that federal capital trials in the state of Texas are 16 times more likely to have a death penalty sentence if the accused is black.

Hall's defense further goes on to explain that a jury of his peers did not try Hall's case justly as all jury members were white. Prosecutor Paul Macaluso was part of the prosecution in Hall's case as his role was to conduct jury questioning. In the petition and stay application provided by Hall's defense team, Macaluso was found to have a history of racially biased jury selection.

In 2005, Macaluso unconstitutionally removed black jurors according to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Again in 2009, Macaluso unconstitutionally removed black jurors, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

In addition to his racially unconstitutional practices, part of Macaluso's legal training took place in a prosecution office that openly used a racist manual. The manual advocated for racist practices that were detrimental to blacks, Jews, and women during the jury selection process. A 1963 circular stated the following,

"Do not take Jews, Negroes, Dagos, Mexicans or a member of any minority race on a jury, no matter how rich or how well educated."

The racial bias that Hall's attorneys contest existed in the case does not deviate from current research. A report done by the Death Penalty Information Center based in Washington D.C. indicated that 25 of 55 federal inmates on death row were black. This is a staggering 46% even though blacks only make up 13% of the national population.

At the time of his trial, Hall was unaware of the racial bias from the prosecution team. And while the evidence is strong in support of racial discrimination taking place, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, as well as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, did not approve the application for the stay in execution.

In a last-ditch attempt to block the execution, Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for Washington DC issued an injunction based on earlier findings that the lethal injectionlethal injectionLethal injection is a method of carrying out a death sentence by administering one or more drugs intended to cause death. Lethal injection protocols are governed by state or federal law and can be challenged under the Eighth Amendment if the procedure allegedly creates an unconstitutional risk of severe pain.Read more → sodium pentobarbital was obtained without a prescription, therefore violating the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

The injunction was immediately appealed by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the stay of execution was lifted. The court also denied three separate emergency applications filed by Hall. The three emergency applications included the following arguments for a stay of execution.

The first noted the conviction was unconstitutional because of racial discrimination from the prosecution.

The second was an appeal for a delay so that the courts could review Hall's claim that his rights were denied because he was not given sufficient notice of his execution.

The third argument followed Judge Chutkan's stance on the original injunction regarding the method in which the lethal injection was obtained.

All three emergency applications were also denied by the U.S. Supreme Court. The only Justices who would have allowed the injunction to remain in place were Justices Stephen Breyer, Elana Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor.

This will be the eighth execution in the prison this year. News station WTWO in Terre Haute shared a statement from the teen's sister, Pearl Rene. It read in part, "My family and I are very relieved this is over. We have been dealing with this for 26 years, and now we’re having to relive the tragic nightmare that our beloved Lisa went through. Ending this painful process will be a major goal for our family. This is only the end of the legal aftermath. The execution of Orlando Hall will never stop the suffering we continue to endure. Please pray for our family as well as his.”