CHICAGO — When the U.S. prisons director visited the penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, this past week, she stopped by the federal death row where Bruce Webster is in a solitary, 12-by-7 foot cell, 23 hours a day.
CHICAGO — When the U.S. prisons director visited the penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, this past week, she stopped by the federal death row where Bruce Webster is in a solitary, 12-by-7 foot cell, 23 hours a day.
Webster’s not supposed to be there. A federal judge in Indiana ruled in 2019 that the 49-year-old has an IQ in the range of severe intellectual disability and so cannot be put to death.
But four years on, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Prisons haven’t moved him to a less restrictive unit or different prison.
Why? His own lawyer, who secured a rare legal win in persuading a court to vacate Webster’s 1996 death sentence in the kidnapping, rape and killing of a 16-year-old Texas girl, says she’s baffled.
“How can I not get this guy off death row?,” an exasperated Monica Foster said in a recent interview. “Well, I did get him off death row. But why can’t I physically get him off death row?”
Asked about Webster’s continued placement on death row, a Justice Department official said only that “the Bureau of Prisons is considering Mr. Webster’s designation determination.”
Webster’s case illustrates chronic bureaucracy in the prisons system and the difficulties in getting anyone off death row. There’s sometimes additional reluctance to act in death row cases given the nature of inmates’ crimes.
In Webster’s case, he and three accomplices kidnapped a sister of a rival drug trafficker in 1994, kicking their way into an Arlington, Texas, apartment as Lisa Rene frantically dialed 911. They raped her over two days, then stripped her, bludgeoned her with a shovel and buried her alive.
Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters has said she’s committed to reforms. Her visit to Terre Haute was part of regular inspections of U.S. prisons. It came months after a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana seeking to end the solitary confinement of federal death row inmates.
Several death row inmates told The Associated Press by email that Peters came through their unit on Tuesday and spoke to some prisoners. It’s not known whether she saw Webster or discussed his case.
Webster, who wants to be transferred to a prison near his hometown, must be resentenced. It’s supposed to be a formality because life in prison is the only available sentence.
