The U.S. is set to execute a Black man for a crime he committed at 19. His lawyer has accused prosecutors for the case of using inflammatory racial stereotypes during his trial.
Courtesy of Susan Otto / via APA Black man is set to be executed by the federal government Thursday for a crime he committed at 19, despite what his lawyer said was a case where prosecutors used inflammatory racial stereotypes during the trial to land her client on death row.
“Of course in the year 2000, the theme of the super predator, that there were these kids that just marauded through our communities, wreaking havoc, was a very powerful and very convincing narrative,” she said. Otto said it was a very convincing narrative to frame to the jury that Vialva and Brandon Bernard, his codefendant, who was also Black, were part of a violent gang.
Otto also said Vialva was developmentally about three years younger at the time of the killings and then when she met him in 2003 he was still struggling to read. Chein said that while a 19-year-old knows the difference rationally between right and wrong, study after study has shown when you add either emotional arousal or social conditions that change the way the brain makes decisions, “it looks like the brain of a younger individual rather than that of a fully matured adult.”
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