Prosecutors argued at Higgs’ trial that Haynes acted under Higgs’ orders, and Gloria testified at trial that Higgs told Haynes to make sure the women were dead. Haynes fatally shot all three women, according to court documents. Because the Court continues this pattern today, I dissent." Three men involved in crimeĪccording to prosecutors as detailed in court records, Higgs, Willis Haynes and Victor Gloria drove the three women to an isolated area on federal land after one of the women threatened to get her friends to go after Higgs. "This is not justice," Sotomayor continued. "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. 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. "Throughout this expedited spree of executions, this Court has consistently rejected inmates’ credible claims for relief," Sotomayor wrote. "The Court has even intervened to lift stays of execution that lower courts put in place, thereby ensuring those prisoners’ challenges would never receive a meaningful airing. Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor each wrote dissenting opinions: The members of the Supreme Court that supported the government's appeal Friday did not give reason behind the decision. The government appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which denied the appeal, issued a stay of execution and set a hearing for Jan. The Maryland judge denied that request, saying Higgs' crime was an "abomination," but that it lacks jurisdiction to change the sentencing order. Nolan said the case before the Supreme Court involved the government's request that the Maryland District Court amend its original 2001 sentencing papers to order that Higgs' execution be carried out in Indiana, which has the death penalty. Cleveland’s was also the last presidency during which the number of civilians executed federally was in the double digits in one year, 1896, during Cleveland’s second term. government executed federal inmates during a presidential transition, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Not since the waning days of Grover Cleveland’s presidency in the late 1800s has the U.S. It’s likely none of the around 50 remaining men will be executed anytime soon, with Biden signaling he’ll end federal executions. Under Trump, the number of prisoners on federal death row was reduced by nearly a quarter. He was killed five days before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. Higgs was convicted for the murders of Tamika Black, 19 Tanji Jackson, 21 and Mishann Chinn, 23 in Maryland. “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 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. In a statement after the execution, Nolan said his client had spent decades on death row helping other inmates and “working tirelessly to fight his unjust convictions.” “There is no principled basis to execute Dustin Higgs given that the shooter in this case is serving a life sentence and the trial prosecutors actively misled the jury in Dustin’s case,” Shawn Nolan, chief of the Capital Habeas Unit at the Federal Community Defenders for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, one of Higgs’ attorneys, said in advance of Friday's decision. Higgs’ lawyers asked for a 90-day stay of execution for hearings, and that his death sentence be commuted. The lawyers pointed to Higgs' Poughkeepsie upbringing in their petition, stating the Maryland federal court jury that sentenced him to death never learned Higgs had spent his early years in a poor, violence-plagued neighborhood that he watched his rarely-present biological father deal drugs and abuse his alcohol-dependent mother, who died of cancer when he was still a child or that extensive school records showed Higgs had significant intellectual and social impairment. Higgs' lawyers had asked Trump to grant clemency, and argued the penalty Higgs faced was more severe than the man who pulled the trigger in the three shootings. Poughkeepsie teen shot violence increases Poughkeepsie seeks solutions to youth violence
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