![]() ![]() government in an extraordinary spree begun last summer by Trump, a Republican and avowed exponent of capital punishment, after a 17-year hiatus at the federal level. Higgs would be the 13th person executed by the U.S. The Supreme Court's conservative majority has so far dismissed any orders by lower courts delaying federal executions since they were resumed last year. ![]() But more than an hour later the department was still fighting legal challenges delaying the execution. with lethal injections of pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate, at its death chamber in its prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Department of Justice plans had planned to execute him at 6 p.m. government planned to carry out the 13th and final execution under President Donald Trump's administration on Friday evening, just five days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office with a promise to try to end the death penalty.ĭustin Higgs, 48, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2001 for overseeing the kidnapping and murder of three women on a federal wildlife reserve in Maryland in 1996: Tanji Jackson, Tamika Black and Mishann Chinn. “Aware at that point that something was amiss, one of the women asked if they were going to have to ‘walk from here’ and Higgs responded ‘something like that,’” said an appeals court ruling upholding Higgs’s death sentence.TERRE HAUTE, Ind., Jan 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. Instead of taking them home, Higgs drove them to a secluded spot in the Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge, federal land in Laurel. Haynes persuaded them to get into the vehicle. The three men chased after the women in Higgs’ van. Gloria said Jackson made threats as she left the apartment with the other women and appeared to write down the license plate number of Higgs’ van, angering him. Before dawn the next morning, an argument between Higgs and Jackson prompted her to grab a knife in the kitchen before Haynes persuaded her to drop it. 26, 1996, when he, Haynes and a third man, Victor Gloria, picked up the three women in Washington, D.C., and drove them to Higgs’ apartment in Laurel, Maryland, to drink alcohol and listen to music. Cleveland’s was also the last presidency during which the number of civilians executed federally was in the double digits in one year, 1896, during Cleveland’s second term. government executed federal inmates during a presidential transition, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Not since the waning days of Grover Cleveland’s presidency in the late 1800s has the U.S. Some members of the execution teams have also previously tested positive for the virus. Among those prisoners who got COVID-19 last month were Higgs and former drug trafficker Corey Johnson, who was executed Thursday. She was the first woman executed in nearly 70 years.įederal executions began as the coronavirus pandemic raged through prisons nationwide. The only woman on death row, Lisa Montgomery, was executed Wednesday for killing a pregnant woman, then cutting the baby out of her womb and claiming it as her own. It’s likely none of the around 50 remaining men will be executed anytime soon, with Biden signaling he’ll end federal executions. The number of federal death sentences carried out under Trump since 2020 is more than in the previous 56 years combined, reducing the number of prisoners on federal death row by nearly a quarter. “I did not order the murders.”Īs the lethal injection of pentobarbital flowed into his veins, he looked toward family members waved with his fingers and said, “I love you.” Louds sobs of a woman crying inconsolably echoed for several minutes from a room reserved for Higgs’ family as his eyes rolled back in his head, showing the whites of his eyes before he stopped moving entirely. “I’d like to say I am an innocent man,” he said. In his final statement, Higgs was calm but defiant, mentioning the victims by name. Higgs, 48, was pronounced dead at 1:23 a.m. No president in more than 120 years had overseen as many federal executions. President Donald Trump’s Justice Department resumed federal executions last year following a 17-year hiatus. (AP) - The Trump administration early Saturday carried out its 13th federal execution since July, an unprecedented run that concluded just five days before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden - an opponent of the federal death penalty.ĭustin Higgs, convicted in the killings of three women in a Maryland wildlife refuge in 1996, was the third to receive a lethal injection this week at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.
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