From [HERE] The federal government carried out the execution of Dustin Higgs — a Black man who did not kill anyone — shortly after 1 a.m., marking the 13th federal execution in just six months. This was the final execution of the Trump presidency, and it will be the last federal execution this country ever holds if President-elect Biden makes good on his promise to end the federal death penalty.

The ACLU tweeted, “Remember: Dustin Higgs never killed anyone. The man who carried out the murder that Higgs was executed for received a life sentence. Maryland, where the crimes were committed, has since repealed the death penalty. This system is completely arbitrary and must be abolished.” [MORE]

Mr. Higgs was sentenced to death in the killing of three women in a national park even though prosecutors acknowledged that another man shot the victims. The convicted shooter, Willis Mark Haynes, received a life sentence, and he wrote in a 2012 affidavit that, contrary to prosecutors’ assertions, Mr. Higgs did not order him to shoot the victims.

Mr. Higgs’s attorney told HuffPost that it was unjust for Mr. Higgs to get the death penalty when the shooter was sentenced to life, and pointed out that the government’s theory was based almost entirely on an unreliable witness who got a deal from prosecutors in exchange for his testimony.

“The basis for which Mr. Higgs is on death row has been dismantled. He was not the shooter. He didn’t kill anybody,” attorney Shawn Nolan said. “And he shouldn’t be executed.” [MORE]

A federal district judge in Maryland effectively halted the Dustin Higgs’ execution from moving forward by declining to modify the original judgment of sentence against Higgs. Federal law states that federal executions are to be carried out under the laws of the state in which the death sentence is imposed or of another state designated at the time of sentencing. Higgs was sentenced to death in Maryland in 2001, but the state abolished the death penalty in 2013 and federal officials failed to take steps necessary to amend the sentencing order before scheduling his execution. 

Though Higgs was sentenced to death in 2001, federal prosecutors waited until August 2020 to ask U.S. District Court Judge Peter J. Messitte to amend Higgs’ sentencing order to direct that he be executed under Indiana law. Without waiting for a decision on that motion, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) then scheduled his execution to take place at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Judge Messitte wrote “the Court believes it lacks the authority to do as the Government asks and will deny the Government’s motion.” Higgs’ lawyer, Shawn Nolan, said, “We believe this order will bar the execution if it stands.” [MORE]. However, the order was reversed.

The DPIC noted “The ruling in Higgs’ case is unusual because he is the first federal prisoner in the modern era who was sentenced in a state that abolished the death penalty between the time of his sentencing and the time of his scheduled execution. Federal prisoners who were sentenced to death in states that did not have the death penalty were designated to be executed under the law of other states, but Higgs’ sentence states that he would be executed under Maryland law. Maryland’s subsequent abolition of capital punishment would force an amendment of the sentencing order, which Judge Messitte found he lacks the authority to issue.”

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department resumed federal executions last year following a 17-year hiatus. No president in more than 120 years had overseen as many federal executions.

Higgs, 48, was pronounced dead at 1:23 a.m. Asked if he had any last words, Higgs was calm but defiant, naming each of the women prosecutors said he ordered killed.

“I’d like to say I am an innocent man. ... I am not responsible for the deaths,” he said softly. “I did not order the murders.”

He did not apologize for anything he did on the night 25 years ago when the women were shot by another man, who received a life sentence.

As the lethal injection of pentobarbital began to flow into his veins, Higgs looked toward a room reserved for his relatives and lawyers. He waved with his fingers and said, “I love you.”

Louds sobs of a woman crying inconsolably began to echo from the witness room reserved for Higgs’ family as his eyes rolled back in his head, showing the whites of his eyes. He quickly became still, his pupils visible with his eyelids left partially open.

A sister of Tanji Jackson — one of the murdered women who was 21 when she died — addressed a written statement to Higgs after his execution and mentioning his family.

“They are now going to go through the pain we experienced,” she said. “When the day is over, your death will not bring my sister and the other victims back. This is not closure.” The statement didn't include the sister's name.

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. It’s likely none of the around 50 remaining men will be executed anytime soon, if ever, with Biden signaling he’ll end federal executions.

The only woman on death row, Lisa Montgomery, was executed Wednesday for killing a pregnant woman, then cutting the baby out of her womb. She was the first woman executed in nearly 70 years.

Federal executions began as the coronavirus pandemic raged through prisons nationwide. Among those prisoners who got COVID-19 last month were Higgs and former drug trafficker Corey Johnson, who was executed Thursday.

In the early Saturday execution of Higgs, officials inside the execution chamber were more diligent about their keeping masks on after a federal judge expressed concern that officials at Johnson's execution were lax about coronavirus precautions. When a marshal called from a death-chamber phone to ask if there were any impediments to proceeding with Higgs' execution, he kept his mask on and shoved the receiver under it.

Not since the waning days of Grover Cleveland’s presidency in the late 1800s has the U.S. government executed federal inmates during a presidential transition, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Cleveland’s was also the last presidency during which the number of civilians executed federally was in the double digits in one year, 1896.

In an opinion piece in The Washington Post earlier this week, Martin Luther King III, the eldest son of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, noted that Higgs, a Black man, was scheduled to die Friday — his father’s birthday. With last-minute appeals, it was delayed into early Saturday.

“The federal government should not be needlessly taking more Black lives, and to do so on my father’s birthday would be shameful,” he wrote.

In 2000, a federal jury in Maryland convicted Higgs of murder and kidnapping in the killings of Tamika Black, 19; Mishann Chinn, 23; and Tanji Jackson.

Higgs’ lawyers argued it was “arbitrary and inequitable” to execute Higgs while Willis Haynes, the man who fired the shots that killed the women, was spared a death sentence.

In a statement after the execution, Higgs’ attorney, Shawn Nolan, said his client had spent decades on death row helping other inmates.

“There was no reason to kill him, particularly during the pandemic and when he, himself, was sick with Covid that he contracted because of these irresponsible, super-spreader executions,” Nolan said.

Higgs had a traumatic childhood and lost his mother to cancer when he was 10, Higgs’ Dec. 19 petition for clemency petition said.

Higgs was 23 on the evening of Jan. 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. Before dawn, an argument between Higgs and Jackson prompted her to grab a knife in the kitchen before Haynes persuaded her to drop it.

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. The three men chased after the women in Higgs’ van. Haynes persuaded them to get into the vehicle.

Instead of taking them home, Higgs drove them to a secluded spot in the Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge, federal land in Laurel. [MORE]