theintercept--2020-11-18--Trump Presses Forward With Execution of Man Convicted by All-White Jury

On the last day of September , less than a week after the execution of Christopher Vialva , 49-year-old Orlando Hall received a letter inside the Special Confinement Unit at the U.S penitentiary in Terre Haute , Indiana .
“ The purpose of this letter is to inform you that a date has been set for the implementation of your death sentence , ” Warden T.J. Watson wrote .
He would be killed by lethal injection on November 19 , 2020 .
“ Soon , I will come to your housing unit to personally discuss with you many of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was at home in Columbus , Indiana , the next morning when she got an email from Death Penalty Action , which had been protesting the executions in Terre Haute .
“ Trump Sets 8th Execution : Most Racist Case Yet !
” the email announced .
It was not until she opened the message that Keogh realized it was the case of her friend Orlando , who she calls by his nickname , Lan .
Keogh had been writing to Hall for almost 16 years .
She first connected to him through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which sets up a Giving Tree every Christmas , decorated with paper ornaments featuring the names of children with incarcerated parents .
Keogh was with her 12-year-old son ; they picked a red ornament in the shape of a ball , which featured the names Solomon and Elijah .
Their father , Orlando Hall , was on federal death row .
Following the instructions , Keogh wrote to Hall to let him know about the presents she was sending his sons , on his behalf .
Hall wrote back to thank her , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never stopped .
“ You know , when I started out , I have to say that I was a little hesitant , ” Keogh said .
But it turned out they had more in common than she would have expected .
“ We love to read , both of us.
” She is into mystery novels , while he prefers nonfiction , but they shared what they were reading and made recommendations to one another .
Soon she was sending him books for his birthday .
As years passed , they bonded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ having grandbabies right around the same time , ” Keogh said .
“ So we were always one-upping one another with the latest cute grandbabies.
” He is ahead in the count , she said .
“ He ’ s got 13 now .
I have seven.
” Today Keogh has a box of letters Hall has sent her over the years .
In his cell in Terre Haute , he has collected items from her , too .
Keogh keeps flower beds and “ he always asks me to send him pictures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those up in his cell because it adds some color to his cell.
” Keogh knew , in theory , that Hall faced execution .
But she had not seriously considered that it could really happen , even after the Trump administration announced it would resume executions after more than 15 years .
That morning , “ I got angry , ” she said .
“ Why ?
What for ?
What possible good can this do anybody ?
” She was aware of the horrible crime Hall had committed ; she had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she did not see the sense in killing him now , rather than letting him live out his days in prison .
Keogh thought back to the last email she had received from Hall , which had struck her as odd at the time .
“ I turned to my husband and I said , ‘ It almost sounds like he was saying goodbye.
’ … So he obviously knew.
” She is planning to travel to Terre Haute to join the protesters outside the prison .
But the spike in Covid-19 cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Now that the virus is growing worse , I ’ m getting nervous.
” Meanwhile , Hall ’ s neighbors on death row are preparing to be placed on lockdown yet again .
“ Over the last two days , I have had what seems to be my last conversations with Orlando , ” one man wrote in a recent email .
“ Do you know how unnatural it feels to have a last conversation with a sane , healthy human being who is clearly aware of the exact day of his execution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yet even as Covid-19 spreads out of control , the Trump administration plans to kill two more people in December .
One is Brandon Bernard , the co-defendant of Christopher Vialva , whose jurors have signaled support for a commutation .
The other is Lisa Montgomery , the only woman under a federal death sentence .
Last week , attorneys for Montgomery , who has severe mental illness , revealed that they had tested positive for Covid-19 , almost certainly as a result of traveling to see her in prison .
In a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seemed reluctant to grant more time for her clemency petition .
Hall ’ s attorney , Robert Owen , who also represents Bernard , has declined to be in Terre Haute for the execution , out of concern for his health .
“ It alternatively fills me with rage and despair that the government is being allowed to pretend as though the pandemic is over when it is not , ” he said .
This week a federal judge denied a stay of execution in light of the pandemic .
In Terre Haute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ men put to death have had their attorneys present , fear of new execution dates is compounded by a sense of invisibility .
In emails , a friend of Vialva ’ s reiterated the dismay he felt at the silence from politicians in Washington before he died .
“ I think Christopher wanted the Democrats to be true in action to their position against capital punishment and to take a public stand … against Trump ’ s executions , no matter the nature of the crimes , ” he wrote .
For Democrats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ confronting a policy that President-elect Joe Biden did much to create .
Hall ’ s case was one of the first capital cases tried under the 1994 Crime Bill , which dramatically expanded federal death row .
The 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act curtailed federal review , making it harder for the condemned to challenge their convictions in court .
Although Biden was instrumental in these “ tough on crime ” reforms , today he has vowed to eliminate the federal death penalty .
Last week , a group of Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ to suspend all federal executions so the incoming Biden-Harris administration can evaluate and determine the future use of the death penalty by the federal government.
” The American Bar Association also sent a letter urging reprieves for Hall , Bernard , and Montgomery to allow attorneys to safely and fully advocate for their clients .
But neither appeal seems likely to succeed .
The Trump administration has refused to acknowledge the election results , much less the ways in which Covid-19 has stymied efforts to save people on death row .
Yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ neglected , including critical context about the failures of the legal system that convicted Hall .
Last year , his co-defendant , Bruce Webster , saw his own death sentence vacated after a federal judge was persuaded by an argument his trial attorneys tried to make almost 25 years ago : that his intellectual disability made him ineligible for execution .
Hall , meanwhile , was convicted by an all-white jury .
Although his victim was also Black , in contrast with the majority of people on federal death row , the exclusion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a disturbing emblem of the death penalty ’ s racist roots .
Hall ’ s attorneys also point to significant failures by his court-appointed trial attorneys , particularly when it came to the critical investigative work that could have moved jurors to spare his life .
Among these documents are declarations from investigators , relatives , and members of Hall ’ s community in his hometown of El Dorado , Arkansas , who describe Hall ’ s expressions of remorse as well as his positive attributes .
Several describe how Hall once saved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ motel swimming pool .
The same records describe a childhood marked by violence , abuse , and neglect — factors that help explain how he came to commit such a heinous crime , but most of which his jurors never heard .
From the moment Lisa René went missing in Arlington , Texas , in the fall of 1994 , it was clear that her life was in danger .
The 16-year-old girl had called her older sister , Pearl , to say that two men had come to the door of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
At her sister ’ s urging , Lisa called 911 .
But the call was cut off .
Her screams were captured on the recording before the line went dead .
Pearl returned home to find the sliding glass door of her home shattered and her sister gone .
Lisa René was from the Virgin Islands .
The teenager had arrived in Texas only a few months earlier , following her sister with the hopes of getting an education that could eventually lead to medical school .
Her parents , Agnes and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to church in St. Croix when they heard their daughter had been abducted .
“ I know Lisa doesn ’ t deserve what she is facing right now , ” Agnes René told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after arriving in Texas .
She prayed that her daughter would not get hurt .
Instead , her worst nightmares would come true .
Eight days after René was kidnapped , her naked body was found buried in Pine Bluff , Arkansas .
Prosecutors would say that she had been kidnapped by men seeking revenge on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Her captors kept her tied up and repeatedly raped her before taking her to a nature reserve named Byrd Lake Park , hitting her with a shovel , and burying her alive .
The horrific crime occurred just days before President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act , known today as the 1994 crime bill .
The sweeping legislation included the Federal Death Penalty Act , which made 60 new offenses punishable by death .
These included “ kidnapping resulting in death , ” one of several @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to convict multiple people for one killing .
After five suspects were arrested , prosecutors said they were considering seeking death sentences against all of them .
In the end , they focused on two men : 21-year-old Bruce Webster and 23-year-old Orlando Hall — the “ first death penalty case filed under the new crime bill in the nation , ” as one federal prosecutor announced .
Hall was tried first , in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas .
Although the case against him was fairly overwhelming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tried unsuccessfully to keep out of evidence , the prosecution ’ s theory was built largely upon the testimony of witnesses who had a powerful incentive to minimize their own role in the crime .
The accounts were at times contradictory ; some of the statements made by witnesses to the FBI would change by the time they took the stand .
Yet Hall ’ s lawyers were ill-prepared to cross-examine the witnesses , in part because their investigation had been rushed and incomplete .
The missteps by Hall ’ s trial lawyers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hall ’ s post-conviction attorneys .
Among the most troubling is one signed by veteran capital defense attorney Kevin McNally of the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel , which was started in order to assist capital defense attorneys with clients facing federal prosecution .
After Hall ’ s original attorneys withdrew from the case , two new lawyers , Jeff Kearney and Michael Ware , were appointed on March 21 , 1995 .
McNally recalls getting in touch with them that summer .
“ I was startled to learn that they had done @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being appointed , ” he wrote .
“ No one had taken the complex , time-consuming , and essential task of exploring Mr. Hall ’ s background in order to develop evidence that could persuade jurors to spare his life.
” McNally was also disturbed to discover that the attorneys had sought to secure a psychiatrist named Dr. James Grigson to evaluate Hall .
Grigson was infamous at the time for having testified against more than a hundred men sentenced to death in Texas , which had earned him the nickname “ Dr @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
McNally considered Grigson unprofessional , he wrote .
He was certainly not an expert he would seek to save a client ’ s life .
Trial attorneys ultimately agreed to hire a mitigation expert , a former colleague of McNally ’ s named Tena Francis .
By the time she was appointed to the case in September 1995 , the trial was just a few weeks away .
In her own declaration , Francis recalled being told up front that there was “ nothing in the family ” that could be of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that , in her experience , there was almost always something about clients ’ backgrounds that could provide context for their crimes .
Indeed , like many who end up on death row , Hall had grown up in a household beset by poverty and domestic violence .
One neighbor , a pastor , recalled in a declaration that one of Hall ’ s sisters used to come to his house and ask if he and his wife would adopt her .
Hall ’ s father , who drank heavily , admitted that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wife in front of their children .
“ To this day , if I hear a loud thump , I involuntarily start to panic , ” one of Hall ’ s sisters wrote in a declaration , describing how her father would lock the doors to prevent their mother from getting medical help .
After their parents divorced , the children were often left to fend for themselves .
The electricity would be cut off and they would sometimes go hungry .
As Francis recalled , she immediately recognized signs of abuse and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But she did not have time for the sensitive conversations needed to elicit the kinds of painful accounts that can make a difference during sentencing .
In a declaration of her own , Hall ’ s mother , Betty , described her reluctance to discuss the abuse she endured when her son was growing up .
“ There are a lot of things you are so ashamed of you don ’ t want to talk about them with anyone , ” she said .
On October 6 , 1995 , with jury selection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the lawyers .
She warned that , along with the lack of sufficient mitigation investigation , the legal team had little information on Hall ’ s co-defendants or the witnesses who would testify against him at the punishment phase .
These included two jailhouse informants — whose testimony was highly questionable .
In the end , the lawyers decided that Ware should go to Arkansas while Kearney stayed to handle jury selection .
“ This is the only capital case ( state or federal ) in which I have had any involvement in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bad shape at the start of trial that one of the lawyers had to abandon the client during voir dire in order to try to conduct out-of-state investigation which should have been completed long before , ” McNally wrote .
In an email , Ware provided a lengthy affidavit that disputed several of the claims in the declarations by Francis and McNally .
It was “ inaccurate and is a highly misleading ” to say he had done no meaningful investigation prior to Francis ’ s appointment , he wrote .
Among other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Hall ’ s original attorneys , which included “ an extensive questionnaire filled out by the defendant , ” as well as notes from interviews with Hall ’ s family members and others connected to the case .
His own conversations with Hall and his loved ones described a positive family environment , Ware said , and he did not have reason to believe they were being untruthful .
He also said that Hall ’ s case was the first time Ware had relied on a mitigation specialist ; in a subsequent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was able to convince the jury to sentence his client to life .
“ I did not use a ‘ mitigation specialist ’ in that case , nor do I believe that I needed one.
” Finally , Ware defended the notion that Grigson , who was never hired , could have made an appropriate expert at trial .
He did not recall Francis or McNally raising concerns about “ Dr .
Death ” at the time .
“ Although Dr. Grigson was controversial , Jeff Kearney and I had the opinion , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ respected , that Dr. Grigson was extremely effective when he testified for the defense .
In addition , since he had frequently testified for the prosecution , the Government would have had a difficult time challenging his credentials.
” It ’ s hard to say whether better legal representation would have made a difference for Hall given the facts of the crime .
News coverage shows how jurors wept at various points throughout the trial , including when prosecutors , over the objections of defense attorneys , displayed photographs of René ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fetal position with both hands covering her face .
The girl ’ s mother and sisters cried as Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Macaluso described her death in graphic detail .
“ You can live your whole life and have a myriad of experiences and never know that evil exists , ” he told the jury .
“ Then you meet someone like Orlando Hall .
He ’ s proof positive of it.
” Defense attorneys made no closing statement .
Nor did they call any witnesses during the guilt phase .
On October @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hall guilty .
In their declarations , Hall ’ s mother and one of his sisters recall being pulled aside in the hallway of the courthouse during the sentencing phase .
Both were told they would be taking the stand that same day .
Betty Hall did her best to describe the abuse she experienced at the hands of her ex-husband and tearfully asked jurors to spare her son .
A week later , the jury sentenced Hall to death .
Hall had been on death row for more than six years when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a stay of execution by the U.S. Supreme Court .
Thomas Miller-El had been convicted in Dallas County in 1986 , just weeks before the court ’ s landmark ruling in Batson v. Kentucky , which forbade prosecutors from using peremptory challenges to exclude prospective jurors based on race .
At Miller-El ’ s trial , prosecutors had struck 10 out of 11 Black jurors , assembling a nearly all-white jury .
Yet the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had refused to consider his appeal .
There was significant evidence to back Miller-El @ @ @ @ @ @ @ His attorneys relied in part on a 1986 report by the Dallas Morning News showing that county prosecutors had used peremptory challenges to dismiss 90 percent of eligible Black jurors in 15 death penalty cases .
They also pointed at a damning document that revealing an overt policy inside the office to exclude jurors of color .
A 1969 training manual in the DA ’ s office warned that prosecutors were not to allow “ Jews , Negroes , Dagos and Mexicans or a member of any minority race on a jury , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ educated.
” One of the prosecutors involved in selecting the jurors in the Miller-El trial was Paul Macaluso , who would go on to become an assistant U.S. attorney and help choose the all-white jury that sent Hall to die .
Macaluso denied ever being influenced by the training handbook , telling reporters in 2002 , “ I didn ’ t buy it then and I don ’ t buy it now .
It was never impressed on anybody and was never indoctrinated .
It ’ s nonsense.
” Nevertheless , the U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The evidence “ reveals that the culture of the district attorney ’ s office in the past was suffused with bias against African-Americans in jury selection , ” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in 2003 .
Hall ’ s current attorney says that the revelations of Macaluso ’ s conduct came too late for his own client .
“ It wasn ’ t known until after Orlando ’ s trial , that one of the members of his prosecution team is a serial offender in terms of striking black people from jury @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Miller-El decision arrived after Hall ’ s first post-conviction appeal had been denied .
“ I think in Orlando ’ s case , if that issue had been raised at the time , it would have been meritorious , ” Owen said .
“ But you know , it ’ s hard to say , because the Fifth Circuit has granted very little relief on Batson claims.
” Last week , Owen filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging the racism in his case .
It cited Macaluso ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evidence Hall has never presented before .
“ A statistical analysis of all criminal defendants eligible for the federal death penalty in Texas between 1988 ( when the federal death penalty was reinstated ) and 2010 ” found that “ federal prosecutors in Texas were nearly six times more likely to request authorization to seek the death penalty against a Black defendant than a non-Black defendant , ” it read .
“ Authorization was nearly eight times more likely to be granted in cases with a Black defendant than a non-Black defendant .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ times more likely to be rendered in a case with a Black defendant than a non-Black defendant.
” In a phone call , Macaluso , now 78 , said he did not remember Hall ’ s case very well , explaining that he handled many death penalty trials over the course of his career .
But he denied ever discriminating against Black jurors in order to seat an all-white jury .
“ It ’ s not true , ” he said .
Lawyers who make those allegations “ have to have something to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Medium post last week expressing remorse for his crime , Hall addressed the issue of race in his case .
“ How did I feel as a black man when I saw my all-white jury ?
I felt like the thousands before me — doomed !
” he wrote .
“ I was never under the false illusion that I would receive a fair trial or a jury of my peers .
… I was an uneducated man , functioning illiterate at best , but I also wasn ’ t a fool.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ power was white , ” he went on .
“ The American justice system has never been fair when it comes to the poor and people of color .
On this fact alone , there shouldn ’ t be a death penalty .
We can have justice without revenge.
” In the past several weeks , Hall ’ s family has come to Terre Haute in droves .
“ He ’ s broken all kinds of records for numbers of visitors , ” Keogh wrote in an email last week .
“ The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lisa Brown , the mother of Christopher Vialva , has been trying to help guide the family through the process from afar , having witnessed her own son ’ s execution .
Last week she spoke to one of the two loved ones planning to attend the execution .
“ She had to take a break when I was talking to her because she became too emotional , ” she said .
It is unclear whether relatives of Lisa René will witness Hall ’ s execution .
Agnes René died earlier this year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the trial suggested that the family did not find much comfort in the death sentence at the time .
As she left the federal courthouse in 1995 , her sister Pearl told reporters , “ I thought I would feel better , but I don ’ t .
None of it is going to bring Lisa back.
” The René family did not respond to interview requests .
Kearney declined to comment .
Despite Ware ’ s objections to the characterization of his work , he said he wished Hall ’ s legal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sentence “ and that Mr. Hall was not looking at an execution date this Thursday.
” Among jurors , there is at least some evidence that at least one might have been moved to spare Hall ’ s life if his lawyers presented a more compelling case .
In 2001 , the foreperson of his jury , Jacquelyn Holmes , visited Death Row Speaks , a now-defunct website maintained by supporters of a man formerly on federal death row .
The site included a profile of Hall , along with an address .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a pseudonym .
She said she had “ followed the events of your trial in Ft. Worth ” and was surprised by the quality of his writing on his inmate profile .
She explained that she had two sons who were around the same age as Hall and said she was curious about how he had ended up on death row .
“ I want to learn more about you as an individual , your views on the death penalty , family , children .
But I must be honest , I also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the events that led you to death row .
Would you consider writing to me ?
” Hall responded and the two wrote back and forth a few more times .
But then the correspondence ceased .
In 2002 , Holmes wrote to the webmaster of the site , inquiring as to why Hall ’ s profile had been removed .
“ I corresponded with him anonymously for awhile , but was overwhelmed by the emotions it evoked and could not continue , ” she confessed .
Holmes did not respond to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is clear she remained haunted by the case long after the trial .
“ I had no problem convicting Mr. Hall for his crimes , for the evidence against him was overwhelming , ” she wrote 2001 .
“ However , when the penalty phase of the trial began , I struggled with sentencing Mr. Hall to death .
I was the final holdout.
” Holmes said she would always remember the pleas for justice from the father of Lisa René and the sadness in her mother ’ s eyes .
“ But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eyes of Orlando ’ s mother .
And her loss will also forever be a part of me .
”

On the last day of September, less than a week after the execution of Christopher Vialva, 49-year-old Orlando Hall received a letter inside the Special Confinement Unit at the U.S penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. “The purpose of this letter is to inform you that a date has been set for the implementation of your death sentence,” Warden T.J. Watson wrote. He would be killed by lethal injection on November 19, 2020. “Soon, I will come to your housing unit to personally discuss with you many of the details surrounding the execution.”
Donna Keogh was at home in Columbus, Indiana, the next morning when she got an email from Death Penalty Action, which had been protesting the executions in Terre Haute. “Trump Sets 8th Execution: Most Racist Case Yet!” the email announced. It was not until she opened the message that Keogh realized it was the case of her friend Orlando, who she calls by his nickname, Lan.
Keogh had been writing to Hall for almost 16 years. She first connected to him through St. Bartholomew Catholic Church in Columbus, which sets up a Giving Tree every Christmas, decorated with paper ornaments featuring the names of children with incarcerated parents. Keogh was with her 12-year-old son; they picked a red ornament in the shape of a ball, which featured the names Solomon and Elijah. Their father, Orlando Hall, was on federal death row. Following the instructions, Keogh wrote to Hall to let him know about the presents she was sending his sons, on his behalf. Hall wrote back to thank her, and the two began corresponding. They never stopped.
“You know, when I started out, I have to say that I was a little hesitant,” Keogh said. But it turned out they had more in common than she would have expected. “We love to read, both of us.” She is into mystery novels, while he prefers nonfiction, but they shared what they were reading and made recommendations to one another. Soon she was sending him books for his birthday.
As years passed, they bonded over personal milestones. “We started having grandbabies right around the same time,” Keogh said. “So we were always one-upping one another with the latest cute grandbabies.” He is ahead in the count, she said. “He’s got 13 now. I have seven.”
Today Keogh has a box of letters Hall has sent her over the years. In his cell in Terre Haute, he has collected items from her, too. Keogh keeps flower beds and “he always asks me to send him pictures of the flowers. And he puts those up in his cell because it adds some color to his cell.”
Keogh knew, in theory, that Hall faced execution. But she had not seriously considered that it could really happen, even after the Trump administration announced it would resume executions after more than 15 years. That morning, “I got angry,” she said. “Why? What for? What possible good can this do anybody?” She was aware of the horrible crime Hall had committed; she had heard him express deep remorse. But she did not see the sense in killing him now, rather than letting him live out his days in prison.
Keogh thought back to the last email she had received from Hall, which had struck her as odd at the time. “I turned to my husband and I said, ‘It almost sounds like he was saying goodbye.’ … So he obviously knew.” She is planning to travel to Terre Haute to join the protesters outside the prison. But the spike in Covid-19 cases has recently given her pause. “Now that the virus is growing worse, I’m getting nervous.”
Meanwhile, Hall’s neighbors on death row are preparing to be placed on lockdown yet again. “Over the last two days, I have had what seems to be my last conversations with Orlando,” one man wrote in a recent email. “Do you know how unnatural it feels to have a last conversation with a sane, healthy human being who is clearly aware of the exact day of his execution, scheduled this very week?”
Protester Sylvester Edwards holds a sign up opposing the death penalty from across the street from the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020. Photo: Austen Leake/The Tribune-Star/AP
Pandemic Executions
Barring last-minute intervention, Orlando Hall will be the eighth person killed at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute since July. The execution spree is unprecedented in more ways than one; according to the Death Penalty Information Center, Hall’s execution would be the first lame-duck federal execution in over a century.
Hall’s execution would be the first lame-duck federal execution in over a century.
Yet even as Covid-19 spreads out of control, the Trump administration plans to kill two more people in December. One is Brandon Bernard, the co-defendant of Christopher Vialva, whose jurors have signaled support for a commutation. The other is Lisa Montgomery, the only woman under a federal death sentence. Last week, attorneys for Montgomery, who has severe mental illness, revealed that they had tested positive for Covid-19, almost certainly as a result of traveling to see her in prison. In a hearing on Monday, a federal judge seemed reluctant to grant more time for her clemency petition.
Hall’s attorney, Robert Owen, who also represents Bernard, has declined to be in Terre Haute for the execution, out of concern for his health. “It alternatively fills me with rage and despair that the government is being allowed to pretend as though the pandemic is over when it is not,” he said. This week a federal judge denied a stay of execution in light of the pandemic.
In Terre Haute, where only two of the seven men put to death have had their attorneys present, fear of new execution dates is compounded by a sense of invisibility. In emails, a friend of Vialva’s reiterated the dismay he felt at the silence from politicians in Washington before he died. “I think Christopher wanted the Democrats to be true in action to their position against capital punishment and to take a public stand … against Trump’s executions, no matter the nature of the crimes,” he wrote.
For Democrats, opposing the federal executions would mean confronting a policy that President-elect Joe Biden did much to create. Hall’s case was one of the first capital cases tried under the 1994 Crime Bill, which dramatically expanded federal death row. The 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act curtailed federal review, making it harder for the condemned to challenge their convictions in court. Although Biden was instrumental in these “tough on crime” reforms, today he has vowed to eliminate the federal death penalty.
Last week, a group of Democratic lawmakers called on Attorney General Bill Barr “to suspend all federal executions so the incoming Biden-Harris administration can evaluate and determine the future use of the death penalty by the federal government.” The American Bar Association also sent a letter urging reprieves for Hall, Bernard, and Montgomery to allow attorneys to safely and fully advocate for their clients. But neither appeal seems likely to succeed. The Trump administration has refused to acknowledge the election results, much less the ways in which Covid-19 has stymied efforts to save people on death row.
“It alternatively fills me with rage and despair that the government is being allowed to pretend as though the pandemic is over when it is not.”
Whatever the future of the federal death penalty, Hall’s case is not the type most likely to spur calls for abolition. The harrowing details have been repeatedly recounted in true crime documentaries and podcasts, which memorialize his teenage victim, Lisa René, and decry the brutal violence she endured. “In the years that I’ve been doing this, she is actually probably the most innocent victim that I’ve ever worked a case on,” Detective John Stanton said in an episode of “The FBI Files.”
Yet other parts of the story have been neglected, including critical context about the failures of the legal system that convicted Hall. Last year, his co-defendant, Bruce Webster, saw his own death sentence vacated after a federal judge was persuaded by an argument his trial attorneys tried to make almost 25 years ago: that his intellectual disability made him ineligible for execution.
Hall, meanwhile, was convicted by an all-white jury. Although his victim was also Black, in contrast with the majority of people on federal death row, the exclusion of Black jurors in his case is a disturbing emblem of the death penalty’s racist roots. Hall’s attorneys also point to significant failures by his court-appointed trial attorneys, particularly when it came to the critical investigative work that could have moved jurors to spare his life.
Among these documents are declarations from investigators, relatives, and members of Hall’s community in his hometown of El Dorado, Arkansas, who describe Hall’s expressions of remorse as well as his positive attributes. Several describe how Hall once saved his young cousin from drowning in a motel swimming pool. The same records describe a childhood marked by violence, abuse, and neglect — factors that help explain how he came to commit such a heinous crime, but most of which his jurors never heard.
Overview of Byrd Lake Park, Arkansas. Photo: Google Maps
The Crime and Trial
From the moment Lisa René went missing in Arlington, Texas, in the fall of 1994, it was clear that her life was in danger. The 16-year-old girl had called her older sister, Pearl, to say that two men had come to the door of their apartment, claiming to be the FBI. At her sister’s urging, Lisa called 911. But the call was cut off. Her screams were captured on the recording before the line went dead. Pearl returned home to find the sliding glass door of her home shattered and her sister gone.
Lisa René was from the Virgin Islands. The teenager had arrived in Texas only a few months earlier, following her sister with the hopes of getting an education that could eventually lead to medical school. Her parents, Agnes and Nicholson, were getting ready to go to church in St. Croix when they heard their daughter had been abducted. “I know Lisa doesn’t deserve what she is facing right now,” Agnes René told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after arriving in Texas. She prayed that her daughter would not get hurt.
Instead, her worst nightmares would come true. Eight days after René was kidnapped, her naked body was found buried in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Prosecutors would say that she had been kidnapped by men seeking revenge on her brothers over a botched drug deal. Her captors kept her tied up and repeatedly raped her before taking her to a nature reserve named Byrd Lake Park, hitting her with a shovel, and burying her alive.
The horrific crime occurred just days before President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, known today as the 1994 crime bill. The sweeping legislation included the Federal Death Penalty Act, which made 60 new offenses punishable by death. These included “kidnapping resulting in death,” one of several felony murder crimes that made it easier to convict multiple people for one killing. After five suspects were arrested, prosecutors said they were considering seeking death sentences against all of them. In the end, they focused on two men: 21-year-old Bruce Webster and 23-year-old Orlando Hall — the “first death penalty case filed under the new crime bill in the nation,” as one federal prosecutor announced.
Hall was tried first, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Although the case against him was fairly overwhelming, including a confession that his lawyers tried unsuccessfully to keep out of evidence, the prosecution’s theory was built largely upon the testimony of witnesses who had a powerful incentive to minimize their own role in the crime. The accounts were at times contradictory; some of the statements made by witnesses to the FBI would change by the time they took the stand. Yet Hall’s lawyers were ill-prepared to cross-examine the witnesses, in part because their investigation had been rushed and incomplete.
The missteps by Hall’s trial lawyers are documented in declarations later collected by Hall’s post-conviction attorneys. Among the most troubling is one signed by veteran capital defense attorney Kevin McNally of the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel, which was started in order to assist capital defense attorneys with clients facing federal prosecution. After Hall’s original attorneys withdrew from the case, two new lawyers, Jeff Kearney and Michael Ware, were appointed on March 21, 1995. McNally recalls getting in touch with them that summer. “I was startled to learn that they had done essentially nothing to investigate the case since being appointed,” he wrote. “No one had taken the complex, time-consuming, and essential task of exploring Mr. Hall’s background in order to develop evidence that could persuade jurors to spare his life.”
McNally was also disturbed to discover that the attorneys had sought to secure a psychiatrist named Dr. James Grigson to evaluate Hall. Grigson was infamous at the time for having testified against more than a hundred men sentenced to death in Texas, which had earned him the nickname “Dr. Death” by the late 1980s. McNally considered Grigson unprofessional, he wrote. He was certainly not an expert he would seek to save a client’s life.
Trial attorneys ultimately agreed to hire a mitigation expert, a former colleague of McNally’s named Tena Francis. By the time she was appointed to the case in September 1995, the trial was just a few weeks away. In her own declaration, Francis recalled being told up front that there was “nothing in the family” that could be of value for mitigation purposes. She cautioned that, in her experience, there was almost always something about clients’ backgrounds that could provide context for their crimes.
Indeed, like many who end up on death row, Hall had grown up in a household beset by poverty and domestic violence. One neighbor, a pastor, recalled in a declaration that one of Hall’s sisters used to come to his house and ask if he and his wife would adopt her. Hall’s father, who drank heavily, admitted that he would lose control and beat his wife in front of their children. “To this day, if I hear a loud thump, I involuntarily start to panic,” one of Hall’s sisters wrote in a declaration, describing how her father would lock the doors to prevent their mother from getting medical help. After their parents divorced, the children were often left to fend for themselves. The electricity would be cut off and they would sometimes go hungry.
As Francis recalled, she immediately recognized signs of abuse and trauma in Hall’s case. But she did not have time for the sensitive conversations needed to elicit the kinds of painful accounts that can make a difference during sentencing. In a declaration of her own, Hall’s mother, Betty, described her reluctance to discuss the abuse she endured when her son was growing up. “There are a lot of things you are so ashamed of you don’t want to talk about them with anyone,” she said.
On October 6, 1995, with jury selection underway, Francis sent a memo to the lawyers. She warned that, along with the lack of sufficient mitigation investigation, the legal team had little information on Hall’s co-defendants or the witnesses who would testify against him at the punishment phase. These included two jailhouse informants — whose testimony was highly questionable. In the end, the lawyers decided that Ware should go to Arkansas while Kearney stayed to handle jury selection. “This is the only capital case (state or federal) in which I have had any involvement in which the defense case was in such bad shape at the start of trial that one of the lawyers had to abandon the client during voir dire in order to try to conduct out-of-state investigation which should have been completed long before,” McNally wrote.
In an email, Ware provided a lengthy affidavit that disputed several of the claims in the declarations by Francis and McNally. It was “inaccurate and is a highly misleading” to say he had done no meaningful investigation prior to Francis’s appointment, he wrote. Among other tasks, he had obtained the files from Hall’s original attorneys, which included “an extensive questionnaire filled out by the defendant,” as well as notes from interviews with Hall’s family members and others connected to the case. His own conversations with Hall and his loved ones described a positive family environment, Ware said, and he did not have reason to believe they were being untruthful. He also said that Hall’s case was the first time Ware had relied on a mitigation specialist; in a subsequent death penalty case, he said he was able to convince the jury to sentence his client to life. “I did not use a ‘mitigation specialist’ in that case, nor do I believe that I needed one.”
Finally, Ware defended the notion that Grigson, who was never hired, could have made an appropriate expert at trial. He did not recall Francis or McNally raising concerns about “Dr. Death” at the time. “Although Dr. Grigson was controversial, Jeff Kearney and I had the opinion, as did other attorneys whose judgment we respected, that Dr. Grigson was extremely effective when he testified for the defense. In addition, since he had frequently testified for the prosecution, the Government would have had a difficult time challenging his credentials.”
It’s hard to say whether better legal representation would have made a difference for Hall given the facts of the crime. News coverage shows how jurors wept at various points throughout the trial, including when prosecutors, over the objections of defense attorneys, displayed photographs of René’s naked body lying gagged and in the fetal position with both hands covering her face. The girl’s mother and sisters cried as Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Macaluso described her death in graphic detail. “You can live your whole life and have a myriad of experiences and never know that evil exists,” he told the jury. “Then you meet someone like Orlando Hall. He’s proof positive of it.” Defense attorneys made no closing statement. Nor did they call any witnesses during the guilt phase. On October 31, 1995, the jury found Hall guilty.
In their declarations, Hall’s mother and one of his sisters recall being pulled aside in the hallway of the courthouse during the sentencing phase. Both were told they would be taking the stand that same day. Betty Hall did her best to describe the abuse she experienced at the hands of her ex-husband and tearfully asked jurors to spare her son. A week later, the jury sentenced Hall to death.
Suffused With Bias
Hall had been on death row for more than six years when another Texas man facing lethal injection received a stay of execution by the U.S. Supreme Court. Thomas Miller-El had been convicted in Dallas County in 1986, just weeks before the court’s landmark ruling in Batson v. Kentucky, which forbade prosecutors from using peremptory challenges to exclude prospective jurors based on race. At Miller-El’s trial, prosecutors had struck 10 out of 11 Black jurors, assembling a nearly all-white jury. Yet the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had refused to consider his appeal.
Photo: Brett Coomer/AP
There was significant evidence to back Miller-El’s claims of racial bias. His attorneys relied in part on a 1986 report by the Dallas Morning News showing that county prosecutors had used peremptory challenges to dismiss 90 percent of eligible Black jurors in 15 death penalty cases. They also pointed at a damning document that revealing an overt policy inside the office to exclude jurors of color. A 1969 training manual in the DA’s office warned that prosecutors were not to allow “Jews, Negroes, Dagos and Mexicans or a member of any minority race on a jury, no matter how rich or how well educated.”
One of the prosecutors involved in selecting the jurors in the Miller-El trial was Paul Macaluso, who would go on to become an assistant U.S. attorney and help choose the all-white jury that sent Hall to die. Macaluso denied ever being influenced by the training handbook, telling reporters in 2002, “I didn’t buy it then and I don’t buy it now. It was never impressed on anybody and was never indoctrinated. It’s nonsense.” Nevertheless, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Miller-El. The evidence “reveals that the culture of the district attorney’s office in the past was suffused with bias against African-Americans in jury selection,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in 2003.
Hall’s current attorney says that the revelations of Macaluso’s conduct came too late for his own client. “It wasn’t known until after Orlando’s trial, that one of the members of his prosecution team is a serial offender in terms of striking black people from jury pools intentionally,” said Owen. The Miller-El decision arrived after Hall’s first post-conviction appeal had been denied. “I think in Orlando’s case, if that issue had been raised at the time, it would have been meritorious,” Owen said. “But you know, it’s hard to say, because the Fifth Circuit has granted very little relief on Batson claims.”
Last week, Owen filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging the racism in his case. It cited Macaluso’s history while also drawing on statistical evidence Hall has never presented before. “A statistical analysis of all criminal defendants eligible for the federal death penalty in Texas between 1988 (when the federal death penalty was reinstated) and 2010” found that “federal prosecutors in Texas were nearly six times more likely to request authorization to seek the death penalty against a Black defendant than a non-Black defendant,” it read. “Authorization was nearly eight times more likely to be granted in cases with a Black defendant than a non-Black defendant. And a death verdict was nearly sixteen times more likely to be rendered in a case with a Black defendant than a non-Black defendant.”
In a phone call, Macaluso, now 78, said he did not remember Hall’s case very well, explaining that he handled many death penalty trials over the course of his career. But he denied ever discriminating against Black jurors in order to seat an all-white jury. “It’s not true,” he said. Lawyers who make those allegations “have to have something to put the blame on.”
In a Medium post last week expressing remorse for his crime, Hall addressed the issue of race in his case. “How did I feel as a black man when I saw my all-white jury? I felt like the thousands before me — doomed!” he wrote. “I was never under the false illusion that I would receive a fair trial or a jury of my peers. … I was an uneducated man, functioning illiterate at best, but I also wasn’t a fool.”
“Everyone in the courtroom with any power was white,” he went on. “The American justice system has never been fair when it comes to the poor and people of color. On this fact alone, there shouldn’t be a death penalty. We can have justice without revenge.”
Lisa Brown addresses reporters on the morning of her son’s execution. Christopher Vialva was executed on Sept. 24, 2020, at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. Photo: Liliana Segura/The Intercept
No Comfort
In the past several weeks, Hall’s family has come to Terre Haute in droves. “He’s broken all kinds of records for numbers of visitors,” Keogh wrote in an email last week. “The CO’s are amazed!” Lisa Brown, the mother of Christopher Vialva, has been trying to help guide the family through the process from afar, having witnessed her own son’s execution. Last week she spoke to one of the two loved ones planning to attend the execution. “She had to take a break when I was talking to her because she became too emotional,” she said.
It is unclear whether relatives of Lisa René will witness Hall’s execution. Agnes René died earlier this year in St. Croix. And coverage of the trial suggested that the family did not find much comfort in the death sentence at the time. As she left the federal courthouse in 1995, her sister Pearl told reporters, “I thought I would feel better, but I don’t. None of it is going to bring Lisa back.”
The René family did not respond to interview requests. Kearney declined to comment. Despite Ware’s objections to the characterization of his work, he said he wished Hall’s legal team had succeeded in overturning the death sentence “and that Mr. Hall was not looking at an execution date this Thursday.”
Among jurors, there is at least some evidence that at least one might have been moved to spare Hall’s life if his lawyers presented a more compelling case. In 2001, the foreperson of his jury, Jacquelyn Holmes, visited Death Row Speaks, a now-defunct website maintained by supporters of a man formerly on federal death row. The site included a profile of Hall, along with an address.
Holmes wrote a letter to Hall using a pseudonym. She said she had “followed the events of your trial in Ft. Worth” and was surprised by the quality of his writing on his inmate profile. She explained that she had two sons who were around the same age as Hall and said she was curious about how he had ended up on death row. “I want to learn more about you as an individual, your views on the death penalty, family, children. But I must be honest, I also want to learn more about your life and the events that led you to death row. Would you consider writing to me?”
Hall responded and the two wrote back and forth a few more times. But then the correspondence ceased. In 2002, Holmes wrote to the webmaster of the site, inquiring as to why Hall’s profile had been removed. “I corresponded with him anonymously for awhile, but was overwhelmed by the emotions it evoked and could not continue,” she confessed.
Holmes did not respond to messages from The Intercept. But it is clear she remained haunted by the case long after the trial. “I had no problem convicting Mr. Hall for his crimes, for the evidence against him was overwhelming,” she wrote 2001. “However, when the penalty phase of the trial began, I struggled with sentencing Mr. Hall to death. I was the final holdout.”
Holmes said she would always remember the pleas for justice from the father of Lisa René and the sadness in her mother’s eyes. “But I also remember the sadness in the eyes of Orlando’s mother. And her loss will also forever be a part of me.”


theintercept--2020-11-19--Biden Treasury Pick Could Defund the Fossil Fuel Industry, Climate Organizers Say

Vice President Joe Biden made climate a priority in his campaign and reportedly plans to make it a centerpiece of his administration , who the president-elect chooses to fill his Cabinet over the coming weeks will determine how his White House actually addresses the climate crisis .
Climate activists are , of course , focusing on the potential leaders of the Energy and Interior Departments and the Environmental Protection Agency , but they are also pushing for a wider vision of what climate-conscious national leadership should look like .
Seriously addressing the crisis will require more than sound pollution and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moving fast to push for climate-serious appointments to an array of positions not traditionally associated with environmental action .
They are casting a spotlight on the position of treasury secretary , which holds significant untapped power to address the climate emergency .
Financial regulatory agencies “ have arguably the legal authority to shut down fossil fuel financing at the banks and asset managers and insurance industries , ” said Brett Fleishman , associate director of fossil finance campaigns for the environmental group 350.org .
“ That ’ s our big goal.
” The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the helm of those agencies .
350.org is a member of a climate coalition called Stop the Money Pipeline , which aims to pressure banks , asset managers , insurance companies , and institutional investors to stop funding fossil fuel companies .
The group recently sent the Biden administration a rubric for evaluating treasury secretary picks on climate , including that they demonstrate a willingness to pull the regulatory levers available to address climate and that they have no recent history of working for the fossil fuel industry .
It ’ s the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate that leaves proponents of grand climate-related action skeptical of establishment names that have been reported as possible Biden picks .
One frontrunner , the moderate Janet Yellen , a former Federal Reserve chair , is a founding member of a climate action coalition — which sounds promising until one realizes that the group was co-founded by fossil fuel firms themselves .
Lael Brainard , a member of the Federal Reserve ’ s Board of Governors , has commented on the economic risk climate represents , but hasn ’ t pressed the Fed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Elizabeth Warren , D-Mass.
, is a climate activist favorite , but she would need to vacate her seat in the Senate .
Sarah Bloom Raskin , who was deputy treasury secretary under President Barack Obama and also served as a member of the Fed board , appeared on the Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats ’ wish list beside Warren — and testified last spring that the Fed was not taking climate seriously enough .
The emphasis climate organizers are putting on appointments outside of environmentalists ’ traditional lanes reflects the growing severity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ realization that modest reforms won ’ t staunch the bleeding .
It ’ s a realization at the core of congressional progressives ’ ambitious Green New Deal proposal , aimed at reducing fossil fuel emissions while using environmentally geared policies to foster economic equality .
“ The genesis of the Green New Deal is the idea that the entire economy is going to be impacted by taking the climate crisis seriously — that to reduce and reverse climate change , it ’ s going to take an all-of-government and all-of-economy response , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Center for Economic and Policy Research ’ s Revolving Door Project , which focuses on keeping profiteering out of executive branch appointments .
With no strong Democratic majority in the Senate , even if Democrats win both runoff elections in Georgia and even out the chamber , swift passage of Green New Deal legislation is unlikely .
Organizers are determined , then , that aggressive climate action will have to come from the executive branch .
Considering the potential that Republicans may attempt to block confirmation of ambitious appointees , getting the right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as the Vacancies Act .
This week demonstrated why climate organizers have cause to worry .
The appointment on Tuesday of Rep. Cedric Richmond , D-La.
, to head the White House Office of Public Engagement was a bad sign from Biden .
Richmond is a top recipient of fossil fuel industry campaign donations among House Democrats and has repeatedly supported fossil fuel-friendly legislation .
Activists have also raised alarm bells about indications that Biden may select as energy secretary Ernest Moniz , who joined the board of Southern Company , an electric @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate policy , after exiting his previous run as energy secretary under Obama .
And for the role of agriculture secretary , former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp , who played a key role in lifting the crude oil export ban , has emerged as a potential pick .
Being slightly better on climate than the last Democratic administration , in which Biden served under Obama , will not cut it , Hauser said : “ If you ’ re trying to be historic ” — which is what the climate crisis requires — “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” How the Treasury Can Act What climate organizers want from the Treasury Department is simple : action .
For too long , activists say , powerful executive branch agencies have had tools at their disposal to mitigate climate disasters but failed to use them .
Climate disasters — more frequent and severe storms , droughts , and wildfires — are already wreaking havoc on the economy and destroying homes , businesses , and communities .
There ’ s also a financial bubble hanging over the national economy — a multitrillion dollar carbon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mortgage bubble that precipitated the Great Recession .
Behind it is the money that lenders and investors continue pouring into fossil fuels : In order to see a return , oil , gas , and coal would need to be extracted and burned for far longer than is safe for the climate and even longer than the market itself would likely allow .
Economists predict that without government intervention , the inevitable transition away from fossil fuels will cause the bubble to burst , leaving investments stranded with no profits to be found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and damaging every sector of the economy — on top of the havoc wrecked by storms and fires .
The risk only increases as more money is poured into new fossil fuel investments : Unlikely to deliver returns , the investments would only encourage more greenhouse gas emissions .
In short , the banks are fueling the climate crisis .
For the climate organizers , the threat created by the carbon bubble is a perfect target for the Treasury Department .
Fleishman , of 350.org , pointed to the Dodd-Frank Act as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to pull to address the problem .
To some degree , Dodd-Frank was built for a moment like this .
Passed in the wake of the mortgage bubble popping , the legislation created the Financial Stability Oversight Council , a body chaired by the treasury secretary that brings together all the other financial and regulatory agencies to examine risks to the economy .
The council has the power to compel the Fed and other agencies to create new regulations if a particular type of activity or institution creates a big enough threat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ report by Graham Steele , director of the Corporations and Society Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business , there are a few ways the Financial Stability Oversight Council could address the climate crisis .
The lowest bar would be for the council to press regulatory agencies to mandate climate stress tests of banks — assessing the banks ’ stability against hypothetical climate scenarios , such as temperature rises of 4 degrees versus 8 degrees .
This would force banks to begin considering their own self-interest as they make investment decisions .
Stress @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first step .
Without rules that force banks to divest from fossil fuels if the stress tests fail , they have the potential to amount to greenwashing — allowing banks to posture as being environmentally friendly by submitting to the tests but without taking action .
A second tier of regulatory agency pressure could involve regulators adjusting calculations known as “ capital ratios.
” Essentially , the Financial Stability Oversight Council could tell regulatory agencies to require that banks set aside a higher proportion of capital than they do now every time they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fossil fuel company .
It would mean fossil fuel investing would be more expensive and the return on investment would thus be smaller .
It ’ s another market-based approach that would make it less worthwhile for the banks to choose to fund polluting industries .
Of course , the most meaningful climate policy that the Financial Stability Oversight Council could put in place would be to give banks no choice and put hard limits on how much they can invest in fossil fuels .
Thus far , the Financial Stability Oversight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an example of why climate organizers are pushing for appointees that would be willing to take the steps available to them .
Legislation aimed at coronavirus pandemic relief and recovery , such as the CARES Act , offers another opportunity for the incoming treasury secretary to put Green New Deal policies quickly into practice .
So far , Trump ’ s administration has poured billions of taxpayer dollars into propping up the oil industry during the pandemic .
The Revolving Door Project noted that Brainard , in her role at the Fed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would allow more pandemic relief money to go to the fossil fuel industry .
For her part , Raskin wrote an op-ed in the New York Times criticizing the Fed for using recovery money to make the dangerous fossil fuel investments .
Stop the Money Pipeline ’ s short-term goal for the Biden administration is to flip the pattern on its head : for Cabinet members to direct recovery funds toward projects that get a bang for their buck by boosting the economy and address the climate crisis simultaneously .
A huge quantity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ including most of the $ 500 billion associated with a program called the Municipal Liquidity Facility , designed to support local governments .
Fleishman would like to see that money directed toward jobs programs for building green infrastructure .
Organizers are ultimately envisioning an even larger role for agencies like the Treasury Department .
Fleishman offered a possible future in which a big public bank or investment authority , potentially funded by the Fed and managed in part by the treasury secretary , would be necessary to finance even bigger Green New Deal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ help build a bench of capable , experienced appointees for such future endeavors , he said .
“ We ’ re trying to align the key players on the field in the right places .
”

Though former Vice President Joe Biden made climate a priority in his campaign and reportedly plans to make it a centerpiece of his administration, who the president-elect chooses to fill his Cabinet over the coming weeks will determine how his White House actually addresses the climate crisis. Climate activists are, of course, focusing on the potential leaders of the Energy and Interior Departments and the Environmental Protection Agency, but they are also pushing for a wider vision of what climate-conscious national leadership should look like.
Seriously addressing the crisis will require more than sound pollution and public lands policy, and organizers are moving fast to push for climate-serious appointments to an array of positions not traditionally associated with environmental action. They are casting a spotlight on the position of treasury secretary, which holds significant untapped power to address the climate emergency.
Financial regulatory agencies “have arguably the legal authority to shut down fossil fuel financing at the banks and asset managers and insurance industries,” said Brett Fleishman, associate director of fossil finance campaigns for the environmental group 350.org. “That’s our big goal.” The treasury secretary in many ways sits at the helm of those agencies.
350.org is a member of a climate coalition called Stop the Money Pipeline, which aims to pressure banks, asset managers, insurance companies, and institutional investors to stop funding fossil fuel companies. The group recently sent the Biden administration a rubric for evaluating treasury secretary picks on climate, including that they demonstrate a willingness to pull the regulatory levers available to address climate and that they have no recent history of working for the fossil fuel industry.
It’s the financial regulatory agencies’ long-term inaction on climate that leaves proponents of grand climate-related action skeptical of establishment names that have been reported as possible Biden picks. One frontrunner, the moderate Janet Yellen, a former Federal Reserve chair, is a founding member of a climate action coalition — which sounds promising until one realizes that the group was co-founded by fossil fuel firms themselves. Lael Brainard, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, has commented on the economic risk climate represents, but hasn’t pressed the Fed to take significant regulatory action.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is a climate activist favorite, but she would need to vacate her seat in the Senate. Sarah Bloom Raskin, who was deputy treasury secretary under President Barack Obama and also served as a member of the Fed board, appeared on the Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats’ wish list beside Warren — and testified last spring that the Fed was not taking climate seriously enough.
Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lael Brainard listens to a presentation during a board meeting on Oct. 30, 2015, in Washington. Photo: Evan Vucci/AP
Green New Deal Approach
The emphasis climate organizers are putting on appointments outside of environmentalists’ traditional lanes reflects the growing severity of the crisis and the gradual popular realization that modest reforms won’t staunch the bleeding. It’s a realization at the core of congressional progressives’ ambitious Green New Deal proposal, aimed at reducing fossil fuel emissions while using environmentally geared policies to foster economic equality.
“The genesis of the Green New Deal is the idea that the entire economy is going to be impacted by taking the climate crisis seriously — that to reduce and reverse climate change, it’s going to take an all-of-government and all-of-economy response,” said Jeff Hauser, founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Revolving Door Project, which focuses on keeping profiteering out of executive branch appointments.
“To reduce and reverse climate change, it’s going to take an all-of-government and all-of-economy response.”
With no strong Democratic majority in the Senate, even if Democrats win both runoff elections in Georgia and even out the chamber, swift passage of Green New Deal legislation is unlikely. Organizers are determined, then, that aggressive climate action will have to come from the executive branch. Considering the potential that Republicans may attempt to block confirmation of ambitious appointees, getting the right people in may require creative means such as the Vacancies Act.
This week demonstrated why climate organizers have cause to worry. The appointment on Tuesday of Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., to head the White House Office of Public Engagement was a bad sign from Biden. Richmond is a top recipient of fossil fuel industry campaign donations among House Democrats and has repeatedly supported fossil fuel-friendly legislation. Activists have also raised alarm bells about indications that Biden may select as energy secretary Ernest Moniz, who joined the board of Southern Company, an electric utility that has sued the EPA over climate policy, after exiting his previous run as energy secretary under Obama. And for the role of agriculture secretary, former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who played a key role in lifting the crude oil export ban, has emerged as a potential pick.
Being slightly better on climate than the last Democratic administration, in which Biden served under Obama, will not cut it, Hauser said: “If you’re trying to be historic” — which is what the climate crisis requires — “you will have to be very aggressive.”
How the Treasury Can Act
What climate organizers want from the Treasury Department is simple: action. For too long, activists say, powerful executive branch agencies have had tools at their disposal to mitigate climate disasters but failed to use them.
Climate disasters — more frequent and severe storms, droughts, and wildfires — are already wreaking havoc on the economy and destroying homes, businesses, and communities. There’s also a financial bubble hanging over the national economy — a multitrillion dollar carbon bubble that could rival or surpass the mortgage bubble that precipitated the Great Recession. Behind it is the money that lenders and investors continue pouring into fossil fuels: In order to see a return, oil, gas, and coal would need to be extracted and burned for far longer than is safe for the climate and even longer than the market itself would likely allow.
There’s a multitrillion-dollar carbon bubble that could rival or surpass the mortgage bubble. In short, the banks are fueling the climate crisis.
Economists predict that without government intervention, the inevitable transition away from fossil fuels will cause the bubble to burst, leaving investments stranded with no profits to be found, hurting pensions, causing job losses, and damaging every sector of the economy — on top of the havoc wrecked by storms and fires. The risk only increases as more money is poured into new fossil fuel investments: Unlikely to deliver returns, the investments would only encourage more greenhouse gas emissions. In short, the banks are fueling the climate crisis.
For the climate organizers, the threat created by the carbon bubble is a perfect target for the Treasury Department. Fleishman, of 350.org, pointed to the Dodd-Frank Act as a lever the incoming treasury secretary will need to pull to address the problem.
Left/Top: 350.org, Food and Water Watch, and other groups organized a protest to encourage Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., to support the Green New Deal in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Feb. 4, 2019. Right/Bottom: New Yorkers and activists from the Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition gathered outside JP Morgan headquarters in New York City, on Feb. 25, 2020. Photo: Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images; Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images
To some degree, Dodd-Frank was built for a moment like this. Passed in the wake of the mortgage bubble popping, the legislation created the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a body chaired by the treasury secretary that brings together all the other financial and regulatory agencies to examine risks to the economy. The council has the power to compel the Fed and other agencies to create new regulations if a particular type of activity or institution creates a big enough threat to the economy.
According to a report by Graham Steele, director of the Corporations and Society Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business, there are a few ways the Financial Stability Oversight Council could address the climate crisis. The lowest bar would be for the council to press regulatory agencies to mandate climate stress tests of banks — assessing the banks’ stability against hypothetical climate scenarios, such as temperature rises of 4 degrees versus 8 degrees. This would force banks to begin considering their own self-interest as they make investment decisions.
Stress tests, however, are only a first step. Without rules that force banks to divest from fossil fuels if the stress tests fail, they have the potential to amount to greenwashing — allowing banks to posture as being environmentally friendly by submitting to the tests but without taking action. A second tier of regulatory agency pressure could involve regulators adjusting calculations known as “capital ratios.” Essentially, the Financial Stability Oversight Council could tell regulatory agencies to require that banks set aside a higher proportion of capital than they do now every time they invest in or lend a dollar to the fossil fuel company. It would mean fossil fuel investing would be more expensive and the return on investment would thus be smaller. It’s another market-based approach that would make it less worthwhile for the banks to choose to fund polluting industries.
Of course, the most meaningful climate policy that the Financial Stability Oversight Council could put in place would be to give banks no choice and put hard limits on how much they can invest in fossil fuels.
Thus far, the Financial Stability Oversight Council has done nothing on climate — an example of why climate organizers are pushing for appointees that would be willing to take the steps available to them.
The CARES Act
Legislation aimed at coronavirus pandemic relief and recovery, such as the CARES Act, offers another opportunity for the incoming treasury secretary to put Green New Deal policies quickly into practice.
“We’re trying to align the key players on the field in the right places.”
So far, Trump’s administration has poured billions of taxpayer dollars into propping up the oil industry during the pandemic. The Revolving Door Project noted that Brainard, in her role at the Fed, voted in favor of lending criteria that would allow more pandemic relief money to go to the fossil fuel industry. For her part, Raskin wrote an op-ed in the New York Times criticizing the Fed for using recovery money to make the dangerous fossil fuel investments.
Stop the Money Pipeline’s short-term goal for the Biden administration is to flip the pattern on its head: for Cabinet members to direct recovery funds toward projects that get a bang for their buck by boosting the economy and address the climate crisis simultaneously. A huge quantity of CARES money has gone unspent, including most of the $500 billion associated with a program called the Municipal Liquidity Facility, designed to support local governments. Fleishman would like to see that money directed toward jobs programs for building green infrastructure.
Organizers are ultimately envisioning an even larger role for agencies like the Treasury Department. Fleishman offered a possible future in which a big public bank or investment authority, potentially funded by the Fed and managed in part by the treasury secretary, would be necessary to finance even bigger Green New Deal projects. Filling important roles today would help build a bench of capable, experienced appointees for such future endeavors, he said. “We’re trying to align the key players on the field in the right places.”


theintercept--2020-11-20--Race Gap in U.S. Life Expectancy Widens as Covid-19 Toll Grows

The gap between Black and white life expectancy in the U.S. is expected to widen by as much as 5.17 years by the end of 2020 due to the disproportionate toll of the Covid-19 pandemic , according to a study by Theresa Andrasfay and Noreen Goldman .
The researchers — a postdoctoral fellow in gerontology from the University of Southern California and a professor of demography from Princeton University — found that overall , life expectancy in the U.S. will shrink by more than one year because of the pandemic .
For Black people , the average lifespan will be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while Latinos will see their life expectancy from birth reduced by more than three years .
Meanwhile , the pandemic will shave just over eight months off the white lifespan .
Since the U.S. began compiling data on life expectancy in 1930 , white people have lived longer on average than Black people .
Those early calculations showed the difference between the two groups to be a startling 13.3 years .
With a few exceptions , over the past 90 years , the race gap has slowly and steadily become smaller to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people lived 3.6 years longer on average than Black people .
But the coronavirus has suddenly and forcefully disrupted that progress .
The overall drop in life expectancy in the U.S. — from 78.6 years in 2017 to a projected 77.5 in 2020 — appears to be the greatest reduction since the pandemic of 1918 , which is estimated to have taken more than seven years off the average lifespan in the U.S. , according to the study , which is awaiting peer review .
But the biggest impact of the pandemic , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the U.S. , is on people of color .
The death rate from Covid-19 among Black people — 114.3 for every 100,000 people — is almost double the 61.7 per 100,000 death rate for white people .
Indigenous Americans and Latinos also have significantly higher death rates from Covid-19 than whites , according to the APM Research Lab , which last updated its data on November 12 .
Black people accounted for 18.7 percent of deaths from Covid-19 but make up just 12.5 percent of the U.S. population , according to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Disease Control and Prevention .
While Latinos will see the greatest reduction in their lifespans , according to the study , they generally live longer than white people in the U.S .
In 2017 , their life expectancy was 81.8 years , more than three years greater than white life expectancy .
In 2020 , the pandemic is expected to all but wipe away this longevity advantage , known as the Latino paradox .
The historic race gap between white and Black lifespan in the U.S. is due to inequality in both living @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the U.S are more likely to be poor and unemployed and are disproportionately exposed to gun violence , environmental pollution , and unsafe working conditions .
Black people in the U.S. also receive inferior health care and are more likely to be uninsured .
The inequities take their toll from the earliest point in life , with Black infants far more likely to be underweight at birth and die , with health disparities continuing through adulthood .
Black people have a greater share of many chronic diseases , including diabetes , stroke @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nation ’ s highest death rate from most cancers .
The disproportionate burden of these long-term conditions set older people of color up for more severe and deadly cases of Covid-19 .
But the undue racial impacts of the coronavirus can be also seen at the earliest stages of life .

The gap between Black and white life expectancy in the U.S. is expected to widen to as much as 5.17 years by the end of 2020 due to the disproportionate toll of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a study by Theresa Andrasfay and Noreen Goldman. The researchers — a postdoctoral fellow in gerontology from the University of Southern California and a professor of demography from Princeton University — found that overall, life expectancy in the U.S. will shrink by more than one year because of the pandemic. For Black people, the average lifespan will be shortened by just over two years, while Latinos will see their life expectancy from birth reduced by more than three years. Meanwhile, the pandemic will shave just over eight months off the white lifespan.
Since the U.S. began compiling data on life expectancy in 1930, white people have lived longer on average than Black people. Those early calculations showed the difference between the two groups to be a startling 13.3 years. With a few exceptions, over the past 90 years, the race gap has slowly and steadily become smaller to the point where, in 2017, white people lived 3.6 years longer on average than Black people. But the coronavirus has suddenly and forcefully disrupted that progress.
The overall drop in life expectancy in the U.S. — from 78.6 years in 2017 to a projected 77.5 in 2020 — appears to be the greatest reduction since the pandemic of 1918, which is estimated to have taken more than seven years off the average lifespan in the U.S., according to the study, which is awaiting peer review.
But the biggest impact of the pandemic, which has already killed more than 251,000 in the U.S., is on people of color. The death rate from Covid-19 among Black people — 114.3 for every 100,000 people — is almost double the 61.7 per 100,000 death rate for white people. Indigenous Americans and Latinos also have significantly higher death rates from Covid-19 than whites, according to the APM Research Lab, which last updated its data on November 12. Black people accounted for 18.7 percent of deaths from Covid-19 but make up just 12.5 percent of the U.S. population, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While Latinos will see the greatest reduction in their lifespans, according to the study, they generally live longer than white people in the U.S. In 2017, their life expectancy was 81.8 years, more than three years greater than white life expectancy. In 2020, the pandemic is expected to all but wipe away this longevity advantage, known as the Latino paradox.
Inequality Throughout Life
The historic race gap between white and Black lifespan in the U.S. is due to inequality in both living circumstances and health care. Black people in the U.S are more likely to be poor and unemployed and are disproportionately exposed to gun violence, environmental pollution, and unsafe working conditions. Black people in the U.S. also receive inferior health care and are more likely to be uninsured.
The inequities take their toll from the earliest point in life, with Black infants far more likely to be underweight at birth and die, with health disparities continuing through adulthood. Black people have a greater share of many chronic diseases, including diabetes, stroke, and heart disease, and the nation’s highest death rate from most cancers.
The disproportionate burden of these long-term conditions set older people of color up for more severe and deadly cases of Covid-19. But the undue racial impacts of the coronavirus can be also seen at the earliest stages of life.
Read Our Complete Coverage The Coronavirus Crisis
“There’s a really big disparity in terms of mortality, with Black and Hispanic kids much more likely to die than white kids,” said Elizabeth Pathak, an epidemiologist who created the COVKID Project to track Covid-19 in children. According to data the group analyzed from the CDC and the National Center for Health Statistics, American Indian/Alaska Native children and teens are 7.6 times more likely to die from Covid-19 than non-Hispanic white children and teens; Black children and teens are 5.3 times more likely to die from the disease; and Hispanic children and teens are 4.7 times more likely to die from it.
Like the preexisting health disparities, the disproportionate impact of the pandemic is due to racism — and the consequences of living in a society that doles out privileges and protections unequally — rather than race itself. The greater likelihood of being unable to work from home and living in a crowded household contribute to Black people’s higher chances of contracting Covid-19 while decreased access to medical care and a higher prevalence of underlying conditions worsen the impact of those infections.
Even racist attitudes can affect the impact of the coronavirus, according to a study published Wednesday in PLOS ONE. The authors, who used data about people’s self-professed biases about race as a proxy for racism, found that levels of racial bias in U.S. counties tracked with both Covid-19 cases and deaths. “Our study showed that explicit and implicit forms of racism predicted cases even beyond the county demographics,” said George B. Cunningham, a professor at Texas A&M University and one of the study’s authors. “Racial attitudes reflect deeper biases that are embedded into systems within society. It shows that racism negatively impacts health.”
While there was little question before that racism impacted lifespan, the already glaring gap between Black and white life expectancies has been brought into dramatic relief by the pandemic. The years lopped off Black and brown lives in 2020 are about 10 times as large as the annual drops in life expectancy due to “deaths of despair” that were observed in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Those contractions of life expectancy — about a month each — were largely due to increased deaths by suicides, drug overdose, and alcohol poisoning among low-income white people without a college degree and rightly sparked a search for policy solutions.
The dramatic new data on shortened lifespans are yet another indication of the abject failure of the United States to respond to the biggest public health crisis of our times.