'When it did not, this Court should have. 'After waiting almost two decades to resume federal executions, the Government should have proceeded with some measure of restraint to ensure it did so lawfully.' 'This is not justice,' wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a dissenting note to Friday's decision. The Trump administration resumed federal executions in July following a 17-year hiatus, carrying them out at an unprecedented rate.Īmong the 12 people put to death since then was, for the first time in nearly 70 years, a woman - Lisa Montgomery, executed Tuesday despite doubts about her mental health.Īt the same time, states postponed all executions to avoid spreading the virus. The final bid to halt the execution then went before the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority - firmly established by Trump appointees - has systematically given the green light to federal executions since the summer. The Department of Justice immediately appealed and won the case. On the contrary, his administration fought in court to be able to proceed with the execution before he leaves the White House next week.Ī court had ordered a stay of execution on the grounds that Higgs contracted Covid-19 and that, with his damaged lungs, he would likely suffer cruelly at the time of an injection of pentobarbital. 'It is arbitrary and inequitable to punish Mr Higgs more severely than the actual killer,' said Higgs' lawyer Shawn Nolan, in a plea for clemency addressed to President Donald Trump at the end of January.īut the Republican president, a staunch defender of the death penalty, did not follow up. The man who pulled the trigger was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole. In 2000, he was sentenced to death for kidnapping and murder. When one of the young women rebuffed his advances, he offered to drive them home but instead stopped in an isolated federal nature reserve outside the city.Īccording to the Department of Justice, he then ordered one of his friends to shoot the three women. In January 1996, Higgs invited three young women to his apartment near the capital Washington, along with two of his friends. WASHINGTON - The US Supreme Court approved the 13th and final execution of the Trump administration Friday, less than a week before the White House is taken over by Democrat Joe Biden, who opposes the death penalty.ĭustin Higgs, a 48-year-old black man, will receive a lethal injection in the federal penitentiary in Terre-Haute in Indiana, after the final court rejected a stay of execution.

Indiana's Federal Correctional Complex Terre Haute where Dustin Higgs was due to become the 13th federal inmate put to death under the Trump administration

Dustin higgs case