The Administration headed by Donald Trump carried out
its last execution and the 13th in six months
on Saturday morning
, just four days after the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
Dustin Higgs
was pronounced dead at 1:23 am (Eastern Time).
In his closing statement, the 48-year-old was calm but defiant, mentioning the victims by name.
"I would like to say that I am an innocent man," he said.
"I did not order the killings," he
added.
[The United States executes the first woman in almost seven decades]
Higgs was the
third
to receive a lethal injection this week at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
In 1996 he was convicted of the
murder of three women
at a Maryland wildlife refuge.
As the lethal injection flowed through his veins, Higgs looked at his family, waved his fingers at them, and said, "I love you."
For several minutes the sobs of a woman crying inconsolably rang out in a room reserved for the family.
Alexa Cave, Dustin Higgs' sister, talks about the moment she saw her brother executed at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA on January 16, 2021. REUTERS / Bryan Woolston
A Maryland federal jury convicted Higgs in October 2000 of first degree murder and kidnapping for
the murders of 19-year-old Tamika Black;
Mishann Chinn, 23;
and Tanji Jackson, 21.
His death sentence was the first ever imposed in the modern era of the Maryland federal system, which abolished this type of penalty in 2013.
The man's lawyers argued that it was
"arbitrary and unfair" to
execute Higgs, while Willis Haynes, the man who fired the shots that killed the women, escaped the death penalty.
[United States executes black man for double murder committed at age 19]
However, District Judge Peter Messitte wrote in a December 29 ruling: "He received a fair trial, was found guilty and sentenced to death by a unanimous jury for
a despicable crime
."
Higgs' attorney, Shawn Nolan, said in a post-execution statement that his client had spent decades on death row
helping other inmates
and "working tirelessly to fight his unjust convictions."
"The Government completed its unprecedented slaughter of 13 human beings tonight by killing Dustin Higgs, a black man who never killed anyone, on Martin Luther King's birthday," Nolan said.
"There was no reason to kill him, particularly during the pandemic and
when he himself fell ill with COVID-19
, which he contracted due to these irresponsible and super-propagating executions," he added.
Higgs's December 19 clemency petition argued that he had been a
model prisoner
and a devoted father to a son born shortly after his arrest.
Higgs had a
traumatic childhood
and lost his mother to cancer when he was 10, according to the petition.
After a 17-year hiatus, the Justice Department resumed federal executions in July of last year.
In more than 120 years, no president had overseen so many.
President-elect Joe Biden has signaled that he will end federal executions,
so none of the 50 or so men on death row are likely to be executed anytime soon.
Just a few days ago, the government executed the first woman in seven decades.
Lisa Montgomery, 52, was sentenced to death
for strangling a pregnant woman
in Missouri and cutting her baby in her womb.
A day later, a
drug dealer
was executed
for his role in a string of
murders
in the Virginia capital in 1992. Corey Johnson, 52, died despite claims by his lawyers that the lethal injection would cause excruciating pain due to to lung damage caused by a recent COVID-19 infection.
Federal executions will no longer have to be exclusively with a lethal injection
Nov. 29, 202000: 26
Since the last days of Grover Cleveland's presidency in the late
1800s,
the US government had not executed federal prisoners during a presidential transition period
, according to the Center for Information on the Death Penalty.
A triple murder
Higgs was 23 years old when, on the night of January 26, 1996, he, Haynes, and a third man, Victor Gloria, picked up the three women in Washington, DC, and took them to Higgs's apartment in Laurel, Maryland, where they drank. alcohol and listened to music.
Chinn worked with a children's choir at a church, Jackson worked in a high school office, and Black was a teacher's aide at the National Presbyterian School in Washington, according to The Washington Post.
The women left the apartment after a heated argument, but the three men chased after them and Haynes convinced them to get into the vehicle.
[These two criminals escaped from prison in Tennessee, kidnapped a man, and stole cars. They are still loose and armed]
Instead of taking them home, Higgs led them to a secluded spot in the Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge, federal land in Laurel.
He handed his pistol to
Haynes, who shot the three women outside the van
before the men fled, Gloria testified.
Investigators found Jackson's agenda at the scene of the murders.
It contained Higgs's nickname, the
Bones
, his phone number, his address number, and the number on his van tag.
On the day the judge formally sentenced Higgs to death in 2001, Black's mother, Joyce Gaston, said the news brought her some comfort, the quoted outlet reported.
"That was my daughter.
I don't know how I'm going to deal with it,
" Gaston said.
With information from AP.
