Christopher Vialva’s final request before the federal government executed him in 2020 was for his mother to help other relatives of the condemned navigate the process. Before he died, Vialva gave his mother’s contact information to another man on death row, who helped her get in touch with the loved ones of people given an execution date.
“I wanted to inform them about how the process went and what they could expect, down to the details, down to the physical signs of their loved ones’ deaths. If they show signs of suffocation,” Vialva’s mother, Lisa Brown, noted proof that the lethal injection drugs can cause the lungs to fill with fluid, creating the feeling of suffocation or drowning. “It’s like waterboarding,” Brown said.
Vialva was one of thirteen people executed by Donald Trump’s administration during the last six months of his presidency. The massacre ended a 17-year de facto moratorium on federal executions and left dozens of grieving relatives struggling to understand the government’s seemingly arbitrary decision to select their loved ones for execution among the dozens of people on death row .
Days after the Trump administration’s latest execution, Joe Biden became the first president to openly oppose the death penalty. After campaigning to work with Congress to abolish the federal death penalty, his administration reinstated the moratorium and launched a review of capital punishment policies and procedures.
But as he nears the end of his presidency, Biden has made no visible progress toward ending the federal death penalty. Have abolition bills in the House and Senate languishedwith little pressure from the White House. The policy review is underway and the Ministry of Justice has continued to seek and enforce death sentences. For the first time since 2012, the Democratic Party Platform Not Calling for the abolition of the death penalty. Unless Biden uses his clemency power to commute the sentences of those on federal death row, those who have exhausted their appeals will be vulnerable to execution if Trump is re-elected.
“It scares the hell out of me,” said Brown, who has kept in touch with relatives of those executed, as well as people still on death row. “The fact that I know there will be more families who will experience what I went through.”
Brown eventually came into contact with Bethany Bourgeois George, whose father Alfred Bourgeois was executed months after Brown’s son was murdered. George is convinced that her father, who was convicted of murdering his two-year-old daughter, was innocent. George has spent the last four years trying to clear his name, posting information about the case on a websiteget in touch reportersand insist criminal justice advocates to investigate the matter.
After Bourgeois’ death, George struggled with thoughts of suicide. “I kept thinking about the areas where I had failed. What I could have done to make things different,” she said. “It became depressing because it felt like no one cared. Everyone fights for the prisoners who have yet to undergo execution. Sometimes it feels like he’s just forgotten. That hurts.”
“I just feel like I’m in this limbo because I know what happened isn’t right. I really want justice for him,” she said.
Diane Mattingly, whose half-sister Lisa Montgomery was executed in January 2021, struggled with similar feelings of personal responsibility for her sister’s death. Mattingly was eight years old when child protective services officers took her from the abusive home where she and Montgomery grew up. Mattingly did not tell her foster family about the extent of the abuse she had previously suffered; she feared that if they knew she had been beaten and raped, they would view her as damaged and not want her anymore, she previously told Elle.
“So I decided not to tell them; to this day it is the biggest regret of my life,” Mattingly said. ‘If I said something, maybe [they] would have gone back for Lisa. Maybe she could have been saved too. Instead, she suffered a lifetime of mental, physical and sexual abuse.”
Mattingly tried unsuccessfully for years to track down Montgomery. They couldn’t connect until Montgomery was accused of killing a pregnant woman, removing the fetus and claiming the baby was hers.
“What happened to her created her,” Mattingly said of Montgomery. “I’m a success story simply because I got lucky and got out. But if I had stayed, I would have been damaged just like them.”
In an attempt to save her sister’s life, Mattingly spoke at length about their traumatic childhood and Montgomery’s resulting mental illness. Before Montgomery died, she wrote in a letter to her friend, “I think my sister is my miracle.”
When Montgomery was executed, it compounded Mattingly’s grief at not being able to protect her sister. She fell into a “depressive, hibernating state” and “couldn’t even talk,” she said. She felt deeply alone.
“You sit there in pain, just like everyone else is in pain when they lose someone,” she said. “People didn’t understand my sadness because they saw her crime, and not her as an individual or as a sister.”
“Lisa’s gone,” Mattingly continued. ‘She won’t be punished. But we are.”
It’s killing me. The fact that I know there will be more families who will experience what I went through.Lisa Brown
After Biden was elected, Brown participated in a video call organized by Death Penalty Action, an abolitionist group, with Justice Department attorneys. “I chose to take them step by step through the day of my son’s murder,” Brown said. “That prevented them from asking any further questions because they were too torn by what I had said.”
Justice Department spokesperson Dena Iverson said in an email that the death penalty review “is ongoing” and declined to comment further.
Brown has also stayed in touch with several men on federal death row who have anxiously watched the Biden administration’s inaction on the death penalty. “I don’t think disappointed is a strong enough word,” she said. “Imagine having to worry every four years whether the next guy who comes in is going to kill you.”
Billie Allen has been on federal death row since 1998 for a robbery and murder he committed continued to maintain that he was not guilty. All was close to a number of people killed under Trump, including Vialva. Prior to their deaths, he helped his friends prepare last-minute calls and raised money so their relatives could travel to Terre Haute, Indiana, to say goodbye.
Allen, who is asking Biden for clemency, sometimes wonders whether he would be among the first to be killed if executions resume simply because his last name starts with the letter “A.” But he tries to focus on proving his innocence instead.
“Being innocent is a burden,” Allen said. “The fact that I have DNA results and an alibi witness that is not being taken into account makes me afraid that no government is going to do anything because it seems like people don’t care. And that’s just based on 26 years of experience from death row.”
“I want to know at the end of the day that I did everything I could do,” he continued. “So I worry, but I don’t let it overwhelm me because I’ve seen what it can do to people.”
If you or someone you know needs help, call or text 988 or chat with 988lifeline.org for mental health support. Additionally, you can find local mental health and crisis resources at dontcallthepolice.com. Outside the US, you can contact the International Association for Suicide Prevention.
