A federal judge in Indianapolis has imposed a life sentence on a prisoner who murdered his cellmate at a U.S. prison in Indiana in 2019.

Staff discovered Mario Waters, 35, unresponsive after “a perceived altercation with another incarcerated individual,” the prison bureau reported Monday.

The killing is raising fresh questions about the government's ability to keep prisoners safe amid severe understaffing and a myriad of crises plaguing the federal prison system.

Christopher Andre Vialva was pronounced dead at 6:46 p.m. Thursday in the death chamber of the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute.

A lawyer representing a man scheduled to be executed at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute Tuesday is asking an appeals court to delay the execution.

The virus deaths are likely to raise alarm with advocates and lawyers for the condemned men over the spread of coronavirus at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.

If both executions take place, the two men would become the sixth and seventh federal prisoners executed in the past two months.

The Justice Department is plowing ahead with its plan to resume federal executions next week for the first time in more than 15 years, despite the coronavirus pandemic raging both inside and outside prisons and stagnating national support for the death penalty.

An inmate at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute who had COVID-19 has died, and three others there also have tested positive for the disease, the Bureau of Prisons said Tuesday.