The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals has since scheduled a hearing on the matter for January 27, nearly two weeks after Higgs' scheduled execution, which the Justice Department says has left it hamstrung unless the Supreme Court overturns the delay. The Justice Department unsuccessfully sought a new sentencing order from a federal judge in Maryland to allow them to execute Higgs following the procedures used in Indiana, a state that still allows lethal injections and that is home to the department's execution chamber. The Justice Department has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn an order by a lower court delaying the execution.įederal law requires that an execution be carried out in the manner of the state in which the condemned was sentenced, but Maryland has since abolished the death penalty.
Haynes, who confessed to being the shooter, was sentenced to life in prison, while Higgs was sentenced to death in a separate trial, a disparity that his lawyers say is grounds for clemency. The US Department of Justice had planned to execute him at 6pm with lethal injections of pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate, at its death chamber in its prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.ĭeath chamber gurney at the Huntsville prison in Texas Higgs, 48, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2001 for overseeing the kidnapping and murder of Tanji Jackson, Tamika Black and Mishann Chinn on a federal wildlife reserve in Maryland in 1996. He was pronounced dead at 1.23am, with the execution having been delayed by several hours after a legal fight to stop it failed. Higgs was the 13th and final execution of a spree ordered by the outgoing Trump administration. His execution comes just five days before Joe Biden becomes US president, having signalled that he will end federal executions. Sotomayor criticized her colleagues who have moved forward the executions, saying "this Court has repeatedly sidestepped its usual deliberative processes, often at the Government's request, allowing it to push forward with an unprecedented, breakneck timetable of executions.A death row prisoner who was convicted of overseeing the kidnapping and killing of three women 25 years ago has become the 13th and final execution ordered by Donald Trump's government.ĭustin Higgs, 48, has been on death row for nearly two decades and was given a lethal injection in the early hours of Saturday morning in Indiana. She mentioned the efforts of the Trump administration, lower level courts and the Supreme Court to speed up the federal executions. "Very few of these decisions offered any public explanation for their rationale." "The Court made these weighty decisions in response to emergency applications, with little opportunity for proper briefing and consideration, often in just a few short days or even hours," Sotomayor said. It often indicates a user profile.ĭescribing the 2019 protocol by the Justice Department, which enabled the federal government to move forward with executions using a new drug, Sotomayor argued that, "throughout this expedited spree of executions, this Court has consistently rejected inmates' credible claims for relief." Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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