Indiana, United States
The United States this Saturday executed Dustin Higgs, the last federal death row inmate to receive the lethal injection under President Donald Trump, four days before Joe Biden took power, who has pledged to abolish this type of death row. judgment.
Higgs was the thirteenth federal inmate to be executed at the federal level in a six-month period since the Trump administration resumed executions of federal death row inmates in July 2020.
Executed at sunrise in Terre Haute, Indiana for kidnapping and murder of three women in 1996, Higgs He was the third federal death row inmate to receive the lethal injection so far in 2021.
In addition, the ten executions completed at the federal level in 2020 were the year with the most federal death sentences in 125 years that year, since 1896, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). the acronym in English).
No more executions are planned at the federal level until next Wednesday, when Biden will come to power under heavy pressure from his party and anti-death penalty groups to end the practice, something a group of Democratic lawmakers presented for. a bill this week.
A TEST BEFORE BIDDING
Biden He has pledged to abolish the death penalty for crimes prosecuted at the federal level and to encourage states to stop seeking the death penalty for crimes prosecuted at the state level.
His first test in this regard could be related to the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the authors of the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, as the Justice Department under Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence against that defendant.
If the Justice Department under Biden changes its stance on that matter and applies Tsarnaev’s life sentence, it will be an early sign of how the new president’s government intends to tackle the matter.
Former Trump-nominated Attorney General William Barr’s decision to resume executions at the federal level after nearly two decades of hiatus sparked controversy in the United States, where the general trend in recent years had been to diminish. to fall back on that punishment. and postpone the moment of execution of the already issued.
According to DPIC, 22 of the country’s 50 states have already abolished the death penalty in their territory, while another 12 have not carried out executions for more than a decade.
That led to more executions at the federal level in 2020 than in all states combined, unprecedented in the country’s history.
THE CASE OF HIGGS
Lawyers for Higgs, last executed during Trump’s presidency, tried to delay the application of his sentence because the inmate had contracted COVID-19, but the Supreme Court eventually allowed him to proceed.
Higgs defended his innocence to the end in the crimes he was accused of for the kidnapping and murder of three women, while his lawyers complained that the man who fired the deadly shots, Willis Haynes, was evading punishment. to death and was instead sentenced to life imprisonment.
“I mean, I’m an innocent man. I didn’t order the murder,” Higgs said just before getting the lethal injection, CNN said.
Her execution came three days after that of Lisa Montgomery, the first woman to be executed at the federal level in more than six decades, prompting the European Union (EU) to insist that the death penalty is “incompatible with dignity. human rights and the right to life. ”EFE