US to hold out thirteenth and last execution underneath Trump administration

The U.S. authorities carried out the thirteenth and last federal execution underneath President Donald Trump’s administration early on Saturday, days earlier than his successor Joe Biden takes workplace with a promise to attempt to finish the dying penalty.
Dustin Higgs, 48, was pronounced lifeless at 1:23 a.m. EST (0623 GMT), the federal Bureau of Prisons mentioned in a press release, after a late-night Supreme Court ruling cleared the way in which for the execution to proceed. Since resuming federal executions final yr after a 17-year hiatus, Trump, a long-time proponent of capital punishment, has overseen extra executions than any U.S. president for the reason that nineteenth century, together with three this week.
Higgs was convicted and sentenced to dying in 2001 for his function within the kidnapping and homicide of three ladies on a federal wildlife reserve in Maryland in 1996: Tanji Jackson, Tamika Black and Mishann Chinn. His confederate, Willis Haynes, who confessed to capturing the ladies, was sentenced to life in jail in a separate trial.
In his last phrases, Higgs sounded calm and defiant on the Justice Department’s dying chamber in its jail in Terre Haute, Indiana, a reporter who served as a media witness mentioned. “I’d like to say I am an innocent man,” he mentioned earlier than deadly injections had been administered, mentioning the three ladies by title. “I didn’t order the murders.
“Some of his victims’ relatives attended, and a sister of Jackson released a statement, although the Bureau of Prisons did not share the sister’s name. “When the day is over, your death will not bring my sister and the other victims back,” the assertion mentioned. “This is just not closure, that is the consequence of your actions.
“Higgs’ older sister, Alexa Cave, could be heard sobbing uncontrollably from a separate witness room as Higgs died.”THIS IS NOT JUSTICE.” The authorities accomplished its unprecedented slaughter of 13 human beings tonight by killing Dustin Higgs, a Black man who by no means killed anybody, on Martin Luther King’s birthday,” Shawn Nolan, one in all Higgs’ attorneys, mentioned in a press release.
“Dustin spent many years on dying row in solitary confinement serving to others round him, whereas working tirelessly to combat his unjust convictions. “The majority conservative Supreme Court’s ruling was in step with earlier selections: it had dismissed all orders by decrease courts delaying federal executions since they had been resumed final yr.
“This is not justice,” one in all its members, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, wrote in dissent. “After ready virtually 20 years to renew federal executions, the Government ought to have proceeded with some measure of restraint to make sure it did so lawfully. When it didn’t, this Court ought to have. It has not.
“The federal authorities executed 10 folks final yr, greater than thrice as many as within the earlier six many years, marking the primary time that it had carried out extra executions than all U.S. states mixed, based on a database compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center.
A minority of the nation’s 50 states nonetheless perform executions. Before Trump grew to become president, solely three folks had been executed by the federal authorities since 1963.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) referred to as the execution of Higgs the tip of a “cruel, inhumane and lawless” spree by the federal authorities.
“President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to end the federal death penalty. He must honor that commitment,” Cassandra Stubbs, director of ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project mentioned. After a failed triple date with the three ladies, Higgs and Haynes supplied to drive them residence however as a substitute took them to the Patuxent Research Refuge. Prosecutors mentioned Higgs gave Haynes a gun and advised him to shoot the three ladies.
The disparity of their sentences was grounds for clemency, Higgs’s attorneys had mentioned.Higgs and one other dying row inmate, Corey Johnson, had been identified with COVID-19 in December, however on Wednesday the Supreme Court rejected an order by a federal decide in Washington delaying their executions for a number of weeks to permit their lungs to heal.
The Justice Department executed Johnson on Thursday night time. Cave, Higgs’ sister, mentioned she believed life in jail would have been a extra simply punishment.” They don’t have freedom in any respect in any sense of the phrase,” she mentioned in an interview on Friday, earlier than Higgs was executed. “What purpose does it serve to kill you? It brings nothing back.”