Why was Dustin Higgs executed?
DUSTIN John Higgs was executed on January 16 and was the last inmate to be given the lethal injection during the Trump administration.
Higgs was sentenced for the 1996 murder and kidnapping of three young women in Maryland. this month
Why was Dustin Higgs executed?
Higgs was on death row for kidnapping and murdering three women - 19-year-old Tamika Black, 21-year-old Tanji Jackson, and 23-year-old Mishann Chinn - in .
In January 1996, Higgs and two friends drove from to Maryland to pick up Black, Jackson, and Chinn, whom Higgs had invited to his apartment in Laurel, Maryland.
Once at the apartment, Higgs made advances towards Jackson, which she rejected, and the girls ultimately all left together.
Higgs offered to take the women back to Washington DC, but instead, a secluded area in the Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge ordered the women out of the vehicle, gave a gun to one of his friends, and said, “better make sure they’re dead.”
One of Higgs' friends shot Black and Jackson in the chest and back, and then shot Chinn in the back of the head, killing all three women.
When was Dustin Higgs executed?
Higgs was given the lethal injection at Terre Haute federal penitentiary in on January 16.
He was pronounced dead at 1.23am.
He was one of in the US. There were sixteen people that were executed in 2020, the highest in a single year since 1896.
In recent years, , , , Maryland, , and have legally abolished the death penalty.
The death penalty is still legal, however, in 31 states.
The US government was rushing to put inmates to death in a pandemic before finished his term.
Why was his execution postponed?
Higgs' execution was postponed as the prisoner had contracted .
His attorneys had called on the Department of Justice to withdraw his execution date after he contracted the virus.
The litigation stated that the execution would be a violation of the US constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment while Higgs is still recovering from the virus.
His lawyers had also filed a clemency petition that urged President "to commute Higgs' sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole," according to
Willis Haynes, Higgs' co-defendant, said in a sworn statement that Higgs "didn't make me do anything that night or ever" yet prosecutors relied on a "highly suspect" witness who testified that Higgs ordered Haynes to shoot the women.
The petition also noted that Higgs was a model inmate despite his crime.
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Higgs was a father to son Da'Quan Darby, who was born shortly after his arrest.
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"From a child to adulthood, my father was always there for me to confide in, to laugh with, to cry with, and even get upset with," Darby wrote in a letter supporting the clemency application.
"But he was always there and has been my number one supporter, showed me what love is, and taught me to be a better man. I cannot imagine or think of where I could've ended up without the love and encouragement of my father."