Federal Judge Blocks Murderer’s Execution

A DC District judge stayed the federal execution of rapist/murderer Orlando Hall hours before he was scheduled to be put to death today.  The Associated Press reports that in her ruling District Judge Tanya Chutkan, a former public defender appointed to the bench by President Obama, was “deeply concerned” about the lethal injection Hall was to receive, which she concludes “violates federal law.”

The 1998 decision by Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirming Hall’s conviction and death sentence describes a brutal crime.  Hall was a Arkansas drug dealer who traveled to Dallas with two accomplices on September 21, 1998 to buy some marijuana.  When the sellers took Hall’s $4,700 and skipped out without delivering the drugs, Hall sought revenge.  Three days later, they broke into the drug supplier’s apartment and found him gone, but his terrified 16-year-old sister Lisa Rene was there alone.  They kidnapped the girl, raped her several times on the drive back to Arkansas, then rented a motel room.  Over the next two days Rene was repeatedly raped.  On September 26, the three criminals took Rene to a wooded area in a nature preserve, stood her next to an open grave with a sheet over her head and hit her with a shovel.  When she tried to escape, she was tackled, gagged, and beaten on the head with the shovel by all three men. They then threw her unconscious into the grave and buried her alive.  Under U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, seven of the nation’s worst federal murderers have been executed over the past two years.   We expect a prompt appeal of Judge Chutkan’s ruling.