![]() Breyer noted that the majority had sided with the federal government on every appeal and every request to vacate stays of execution over the course of the execution spree. Justice Elena Kagan separately noted that she would have voted to leave the stay in place. Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor each authored opinions dissenting from the majority’s decision to lifting the stay of Higgs’ execution. Attaching a Baltimore Sun editorial, Putting Dustin Higgs to death would not be justice, she asked “PLEASE RT this today, my father, #MLK’s, birthday.” “The Federal Government plans to execute #DustinHiggs today, for a crime someone else confessed to committing,” she wrote. King’s birthday, his daughter, Bernice King posted several tweets opposing Higgs’ execution. He responded, ‘I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crime.’ He explained that ‘capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.’ ![]() Martin Luther King Jr., was asked whether God approves of the death penalty for certain crimes. In a Washington Post op-ed on January 14, King’s oldest son, Martin Luther King III, wrote: “In 1957, my father, the Rev. spoke out against the offensiveness of executing a Black man on the legendary civil rights leader’s birthday. over such a long period of time since executions resumed in the 1970s. No single government had been the sole active executioner in the U.S. government in the 244-year history of the United States. It marked the most consecutive civilian executions by any state or the U.S. ![]() The execution spree was unequaled in its size and duration, surpassing the 12 consecutive executions carried out over a span of 91 days by Texas between January 10 and April 11, 2007. The execution was the 13 th conducted by the federal government over a 186-day period in which no state in the Union executed a single prisoner. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a blistering dissent from the majority’s unsigned order. had lifted an injunction prohibiting Higgs’ execution while he remained infected with COVID-19. A day earlier, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. It was the 17 th stay of execution lifted by federal appeals courts during the execution spree. Supreme Court vacated a stay of execution that would have provided a federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia time to consider issues regarding the legality of Higgs’ execution date. The execution moved forward after six justices of the U.S. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday was put to death by private executioners hired in a secret no-bid contract.ĭustin John Higgs (pictured), who did not kill anyone and professed his innocence prior to his execution, was pronounced dead at 1:23 a.m. The appeals court concluded that rational jurors could find that Higgs had the dominant role in the murders even though Haynes fired the gun.An historically aberrant six-month federal execution spree came to a close after midnight on Januwhen an African-American man who was scheduled to die on the Rev. ![]() Higgs argued his death sentence should be thrown out because jurors failed to consider it as a “mitigating factor” that Haynes was convicted of identical charges but sentenced to life. Trump administration condemned over Lisa Montgomery execution Gloria pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and was sentenced to seven years. A different jury convicted Higgs and returned a death sentence. The jurors who convicted Haynes failed to reach a unanimous verdict on a death sentence. It contained Higgs’s nickname, “Bones”, his telephone number, his address and the tag number for his van. Investigators found Jackson’s day planner at the scene. “Gloria turned to ask Higgs what he was doing, but saw Higgs holding the steering wheel and watching the shootings from the rearview mirror,” said the 2013 ruling by a three-judge panel of the 4th US circuit court of appeals.Ĭhinn worked with the children’s choir at a church, Jackson worked in the office at a high school and Black was a teacher’s aide at National Presbyterian school in Washington, according to the Washington Post.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |