Washington, United States
The federal authorities of the United States preparing this Friday its thirteenth and final execution of an unprecedented series, before the transfer of power of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, who campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty.
Except for justice grant him a last-minute pardon, Dustin Higgs, a 48-year-old black man, will receive a lethal injection in the federal penitentiary Indiana Highlands.
One night in January 1996, he invited three young women to his apartment near Washington, with two friends. One of the girls rejected her advances, In the face of which he offered to take them home, but instead stopped on isolated federal land.
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There, according to the Justice Department, he ordered one of his friends to shoot the three women.
In 2000, he was sentenced to death for kidnapping and murder. The perpetrator of the shootings was sentenced to life imprisonment.
“It is arbitrary and unfair to punish Mr. Higgs more than the killer,” his lawyer, Shawn Nolan, said in a leniency application addressed to Trump in late December.
But the Republican president, a staunch defender of the death penalty, did not agree. Instead, his administration acted in court to proceed with the execution before he left the White House next Wednesday.
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A court had ordered his adjournment alleging that Higgs became infected with covid-19 and that his lungs affected by the disease were likely to suffer greatly at the time of pentobarbital injection.
The Justice Department appealed immediately and won the case.
A last resort, this time related to competition issues, is still pending a response to the Supreme Court, the Conservative majority has systematically given the green light to federal executions since the boreal summer.
The Republican administration resumed in July this practice suspended for 17 years, while simultaneously the states postponed all executions to prevent the spread of viruses.
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Since then, 12 people have received lethal injections in Terre-Haute including, for the first time in almost 70 years, a woman, who was executed on Tuesday despite doubts about her mental health.
Biden, who will be sworn in as the new president on Wednesday, opposes the death penalty and has vowed to work with Congress to try to abolish it at the federal level.
Democratic lawmakers on Monday introduced a bill to that effect that is likely to be passed as the party regained control of the Senate.