Federal judge rejects request to halt federal prisoner's execution slated for later this week

A federal judge rejected a request on Tuesday to stop the impending execution of an inmate convicted for crimes pertaining to a double homicide and robbery in Texas. 

The 40-year-old Brandon Bernard's death sentence is slated to be carried out on Thursday at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. 

Another person involved in the 1999 incident was executed earlier this year, according to the Indianapolis Star. That individual, Christopher Vialva, shot the two victims, Todd and Stacie Bagley, in the head.

Bernard lit the married couple's car on fire while they were in it. An autopsy found that the husband died from a gunshot wound while the wife died from smoke inhalation, according to the outlet. 

"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," the Indianapolis Star reported. "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."

Rob Owen, a lawyer for Bernard, informed the news outlet that the judge's decision would be appealed: “This is the first act of a several act drama,” Owen said.

The prisoner's lawyers have brought the case before the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney asking for President Trump to commute the man's sentence to life imprisonment.

"At the heart of the defense case are four arguments," the outlet reported. "One, that in the original plan Bernard was only a “getaway driver,” according to Owen. 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."

"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," the outlet noted.