‘He was such a reformed person’: Kim Kardashian mourns Brandon Bernard’s execution

Kim Kardashian calls for “compassion and empathy” after husband Kanye Wast’s recent comments, stating he struggles with bipolar disorder. USA TODAY

Kim Kardashian is mourning Brandon Bernard, who was executed Thursday despite a flurry of last-minute appeals filed by his lawyers.

Bernard was pronounced dead at 9:27 p.m., the Associated Press reported. 

“I’m so messed up right now,” Kardashian shared on Twitter. “They killed Brandon. He was such a reformed person. So hopeful and positive until the end. More importantly he is sorry, so sorry for the hurt and pain he has caused others.”

The reality star also shared Bernard’s final message for her, as he was awaiting lethal injection.

“As he was in the chair his attorney called me and they just had their last call and said this,” she wrote. “Brandon said he loves you and wants to say thank you again. He said he doesn’t feel too claustrophobic in the chair.”

According to Kardashian, Bernard, who was convicted for crimes related to a double murder and robbery in Texas in 1999, was a lover of classical music and a “master at crochet,” who often joked that “if someone just saw his cell they would think it was a grandmas cell.” She also shared a piece of advice that Bernard wanted to impart on young people: Don’t get involved “with the wrong crowd.”

“I could go on and on about what an amazing person Brandon was,” she added. “I do know he left this earth feeling supported and loved and at peace. This just has to change: our system is so (expletive) up.”

In the hours leading up to Bernard’s execution, Kardashian, who has been vocal in her advocacy for criminal justice reform, urged her followers to tweet at President Donald Trump to halt the execution.

On Tuesday, a federal judge denied a request to halt Bernard’s execution.

“1 hour until Brandon Bernard will be executed,” Kardashian wrote earlier Thursday. “It’s #HumanRightsDay and here in the United States we are executing someone who was 18 at the time of the crime, was not the shooter and has rehabilitated himself. So shameful.”

According to court documents, Bernard was not an architect of the robbery plan that led to the brutal deaths of Todd and Stacie Bagley on the Fort Hood military base in Killeen, Texas. Christopher Vialva, an accomplice, shot both victims in the head. Bernard later lit their vehicle on fire while the Bagleys were still inside it.

An autopsy revealed Todd Bagley was killed by a gunshot wound, but Stacie Bagley’s cause of death was smoke inhalation. Vialva and Bernard were both sentenced to death, and Vialva was executed by lethal injection on Sept. 24. 

Bernard’s lawyers had argued that the prosecuting team in his trial withheld an expert witness who attested to Bernard’s low position in the hierarchy of his local gang that committed the crime. In his order on Tuesday, Judge James Sweeney of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Indiana wrote that the expert witness’s contribution wasn’t compelling enough to challenge the jurors’ death sentence conviction.

Though Kardashian noted she “can empathize and feel pain for the victims and their families,” she added that “killing Brandon will not bring them back.”

“I believe in my heart of hearts killing him isn’t right,” she wrote. “What Brandon did was wrong, but killing him won’t make things right.”

Kardashian also shared details of her last phone call with Bernard on the day of his execution, describing it as the “hardest call I’ve ever had.”

“When he told me he’s claustrophobic and they offered to give him a shot of Sedative to calm him down before they put him in the chair and he just didn’t want to panic, I literally lost it,” she wrote. “I had to mute my phone so he wouldn’t hear me cry like that.”

By the end of their call, Kardashian said she and Bernard were trying to remain hopeful.

“We didn’t say goodbye bc we wanted to be hopeful that we would talk again,” she wrote. “we said talk to you soon!”

Bernard’s execution makes him the ninth federal prisoner to be executed after the Trump administration ended a 17-year hiatus on federal executions earlier in 2020, pending further appeals. 

Bernard’s lawyers appealed Sweeney’s decision to the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday. They also submitted papers to the U.S. Supreme Court this week requesting that the justices halt Bernard’s execution. Both courts denied the requests Thursday. 

Last week, they presented their case to the Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney and requested that Trump commute Bernard’s sentence to life in prison.

At the heart of the defense case were four arguments. One, that in the original plan Bernard was only a “getaway driver,” according to Rob Owen, one of Bernard’s lawyers. Two, that a former warden from the federal Bureau of Prisons said Bernard should be commuted because of his good conduct during his 20 years in prison. And three, that five of the nine jurors who handed Bernard his death sentence have since come forward to say that they regret the original verdict. 

Federal judge denies request to halt the execution of Brandon Bernard scheduled for Thursday

Four of the jurors asked that Bernard’s sentence be commuted to life in prison, while the fifth juror said they would not object to Bernard’s sentence being commuted, said Owen.

Owen also said that the decision by the prosecuting team to withhold an expert witness had an outsized impact on the verdict, because it would have contradicted with other testimony that described the gang as having no real leadership. 

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Sweeney acknowledged in his order on Tuesday that Bernard’s team presented a strong case that evidence was withheld during Bernard’s original trial. But he said that this evidence didn’t overcome the facts of the case. 

“Rather than taking into consideration hierarchy in general, the sentence reflects the actual conduct in this case,” wrote Sweeney. “Namely, the jury recommended a life sentence for Mr. Bernard where the murder of Mr. Bagley was directly attributable not to Mr. Bernard but to the bullet fired by Mr. Vialva, and the jury recommended a death sentence for Mr. Bernard only where the murder of Mrs. Bagley was attributable, at least in part, to smoke she inhaled from the fire directly set by Mr. Bernard.”

Kim Kardashian visits White House, thanks Trump for commuting sentences of ‘three really deserving women’

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