Justice Denied: Inmate Still on US Death Row Despite Vacated Death Sentence

The head of the U.S. prisons went to the jail in Terre Haute, Indiana this week. They visited the death row where Bruce Webster is staying alone in a small cell that is only 12 feet by 7 feet and he can’t leave it for 23 hours each day. Although a judge declared that Bruce, who is 49 years old, has an IQ that makes him too disabled to be executed, he still lives on death row.

It’s been four years, but the government still hasn’t moved a certain man to a better place in prison or another prison altogether. His lawyer, who had managed to get him out of getting the death sentence for kidnapping, raping and killing a 16-year-old girl in 1996, is confused as to why this has not happened yet.

Monica Foster recently said in an interview, “I can’t believe I’m not able to take this guy off death row even though I was able to get him off of it.”

When asked why Mr. Webster is still on death row, a Justice Department official said that they are looking into his situation.

Webster’s case shows us that the prisons system is really slow and not very helpful when it comes to helping people escape death row. It also makes it even harder since many on death row have committed terrible crimes.

In 1994, Webster and three of his friends illegally entered an apartment in Arlington, Texas and kidnapped the sister of someone from another drug gang. During the next two days, they managed to rape her before driving her away and beating her with a shovel. Eventually, they buried her alive!

Colette Peters, who is the head of all prisons, has made a promise to improve prisons. Her inspection of U.S. prisons, with Terre Haute being one of them, happened after an ACLU lawsuit was filed about how the solitary confinement for federal death row inmates can cause serious mental pain.

Prisoners on death row recently informed Big Big News by email that a prison official called Peters visited them on Tuesday. It’s unknown if Peters saw or talked about the prisoner, Webster. Moving Webster would be an easy way for President Joe Biden to keep his promise of putting an end to federal executions, according to Foster.

The lawyer from Indianapolis said that it’s the right thing to do, and there wouldn’t be any complications for it. Webster wants to be sent to a prison close to his hometown, Pine Bluff in Arkansas, so he needs to get his sentence changed. This change won’t really matter much because he has no choice but to serve life imprisonment.

In 2021, the Justice Department and Webster’s lawyers asked a judge from Texas (where Webster had originally been tried in 1996) to re-sentence him, but the judge said he wasn’t allowed to do that. Judge Terry Means also disagreed with another judge, Judge William Lawrence, who ruled out Webster’s death sentence and seemed to ignore what the jury had decided – that most of them didn’t think Webster was intellectually disabled.

The government announced that the ruling by Means is final, and it’s their stance that Mr. Webster isn’t being sentenced to death right now. Foster mentioned that it’s the Justice Department’s job to get Webster out of prison where he could have been put to death.

In the last days of President Trump’s rule, the Justice Department put thirteen people on death row to death. Some of them were friends with Webster. As soon as Biden became president, he ordered that no more executions take place and changed some past decisions about seeking the death penalty in other cases. But for others it is still an option.

Lawrence made a decision based on the Atkins v. Virginia court case, which happened in 2002. This important Supreme Court decision said that killing people with intellectual disabilities was against the Eighth Amendment law which stops cruel and unusual punishments.

Despite a ruling that prevents some people with disabilities from being executed, the Death Penalty Information Center has identified 25 cases, including two federal inmates (Alfred Bourgeois and Corey Johnson) who were put to death during Trump’s presidency.

A court was trying to figure out if Webster had a disability that made it hard for him to learn. They looked at 3 questions – Was his IQ (intelligence) lower than average, did he have trouble learning basics skills and was this problem with learning before age 18? Tests showed that Webster’s IQ was between 50 and 65 which is really low – the average IQ is 100.

When arguing, Webster’s lawyers said that even as a child, he had trouble tying his shoes and could not tell the difference between clubs and spades cards.

Prosecutors disagreed with these claims and instead argued that Webster was pretending to be less intelligent by giving incorrect answers on IQ tests to avoid being given the death penalty. To prove his intelligence, they brought up how he managed to pick locks while in prison so he could sneak into the women’s section of the jail.

The government said that Webster had been able to work, even if his job was illegal (drug dealing). Nevertheless, the most powerful evidence was found in Social Security records which indicated that before the murder, Webster’s IQ was low enough to be classified as ‘intellectually disabled’. This information wasn’t presented at his trial.

Foster feels scared that if Trump wins the election, he and his government may try to bring back Webster’s death penalty. And because of this, Foster fears that the punishment might be carried out.