Last night at 9.27 pm, Eastern time, Brandon Bernard was declared dead.

That's 20 minutes after the United States government first injected him with a lethal

cocktail of drugs taking his life.

The United States government murdered a man, claiming that it would make things right for

a murder that he participated in 20 years earlier.

I want to unpack and explain all of the people, all of the systems that failed this man.

And if we can't have an honest conversation about it, we can't be specific then listen

to something else.

I don't know how else to say it.

Systems and people failed Brandon Bernard.

Thankfully last night, Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor in her minority opinion,

it was a six-three decision against stopping the execution.

She wrote the dissenting opinion and it was profound and powerful.

But let me unpack and explain it all.

This is Sean King and you are listening to The Breakdown.

Of course, at some point in his presidency, Donald Trump was going to go on an execution

spree.

And in a lot of ways, it has surprised us that it took nearly three and a half years

into his turn and to his only term, thankfully, for Trump to actually take this up.

It's weird because for three and a half years, it appeared that Donald Trump was going

to continue what started under the Bush administration continued through the Obama administration.

And while neither administration, Bush or Obama, did away with the death penalty, in fact,

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