13th & final execution of death row inmates in Trump presidency carried out on Jan 15

An inmate on death row in Indiana Dustin Higgs, died on January 15 when the Trump administration carried out its 13th and final federal execution. The man has been accused of killing three women in Maryland in 1996. According to the reports by BBC, Higgs died of lethal injection at 01:23 local time. 

Higgs was sentenced in 2000 for accompanying two other men who murdered 3 women in cold blood, with Willis Haynes, one of the men that pulled the trigger. The federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., pronounced Higgs guilty of charges—first-degree premeditated murder, three counts of first-degree felony murder, and three counts of kidnapping that led to death. 

Higgs sentenced to death 

The Trump administration's Justice Department said in a statement that it will announce federal executions in the closing days of Trump's Presidency as the exercise has been in place for over 17 years since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed office. However, the Death Penalty Information Center's Robert Dunham, in a statement to NPR, condemned the executions by Trump Justice Department during a transition period. 

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In a statement to AP, an attorney for Higgs, Shawn Nolan defended Higgs as  “a fine man, a terrific father, brother, and nephew” who “spent decades on death row in solitary confinement helping others around him, while working tirelessly to fight his unjust convictions.” Nolan told prosecutors that “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”. The attorney argued that the death penalty for Higgs immediately after his recovery from COVID-19 was ‘cruel’.

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The Democrat senate meanwhile, introduced a bill to abolish federal capital punishment this week. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, the incoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., the proposed legislation, cited by agency npr, to end health penalties at the federal level. Dems pushed to re-sentence the federal inmates that were pronounced death for their crimes. Democrats urged that Congress must act immediately, arguing that the State-sanctioned ‘murder’ wasn’t synonymous with serving justice.

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(Image Credits: AP)