Brandon Bernard is scheduled to be executed tonight. The crime was 20 years ago. He was a teenager. He didn't pull the trigger.

The Trump administration is on track to execute 13 people before he leaves office. It would be more federal executions than the past 67 years combined.

Five of the nine people who served on his jury, the majority, have come out in favor of commutation saying they do not think Bernard should be killed. People who say they weren't originally presented with all of the information they should have always had https://www.helpsavebrandon.com/jurors-who-now-support-saving-brandon

It is categorically *absurd* that someone should get the death penalty (at all) but *especially* for something they did when they were a teenager. Research shows our brains aren't fully developed until our mid-20s.

And they want to *kill* him for something he did when he was 18.

Bernard would not deserve to die even if he had been the one to pull the trigger, bc the death penalty is wrong. But the idea that this man is going to be killed for something that happened two decades ago, when he wasn't the actual person who took the victims' lives is egregious

Read @LilianaSegura for more on the case: https://theintercept.com/2020/12/05/federal-executions-brandon-bernard/

"In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling, Roper v. Simmons, which outlawed death sentences for defendants who committed their crimes before the age of 18...Today it is unlikely that Bernard would be sentenced to die for his role in the crime."

None of this is to say that accountability doesn't matter, even when you're a teenager, but accountability is not killing someone for something they were involved in as a teen. One can understand that what happened to the victims was horrible, and not support taking another life.

“Although prosecutors repeatedly stressed that he was the only one in a position to set the car on fire, neither Lewis nor Brown said they saw him do it. Bernard’s lawyers also emphasized the lack of physical evidence linking their client to the fire.” https://theintercept.com/2020/12/05/federal-executions-brandon-bernard/

When there is this level of uncertainty about someone's role in a crime, you simply cannot move forward killing them, because there is no going back from that.

This is the campaign launched by his defense team: https://www.helpsavebrandon.com/