Entries tagged with “Dustin Higgs”
Research
Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 29, 2021
Legitimacy and the Rule of Law: Supreme Court’s Institutional Standing Damaged by Rulings During Federal Execution Spree
From July 14, 2020 through January 16, 2021, the federal government executed thirteen prisoners. It was the most consecutive executions by a single jurisdiction since the U.S. death penalty resumed in the 1970s and the longest period of time in which an execution spree by any government went unabated while no other jurisdiction executed anyone. During that time, the U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly intervened to facilitate executions, despite numerous disputed issues of material fact and…
Issues
Native Americans
,Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 18, 2021
‘This is Not Justice’ — Federal Execution Spree Ends with Planned Execution of African-American on Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday
An historically aberrant six-month federal execution spree came to a close after midnight on January 16, 2021 when an African-American man who was scheduled to die on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday was put to death by private executioners hired in a secret no-bid contract. Dustin 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 execution moved forward after six justices of the U.S. Supreme…
Issues
Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 13, 2021
Supreme Court Vacates Stays of Execution, Paves Way for Late-Night Execution of Lisa Montgomery
After a series of rulings by the United States Supreme Court summarily vacated two stays of execution and denied attempts to reinstate two others, the federal government executed death row prisoner Lisa Montgomery (pictured) on January 13, 2021. Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row, was the first woman executed by the federal government in more than 67 years, the first person executed in the U.S. in 2021, and the 11th prisoner put to death in a six-month federal execution spree…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 08, 2021
ProPublica Investigation Reveals Irregularities in Federal Executions
The federal government’s historically aberrant execution spree has been fraught with irregularities and “has trampled over an array of barriers, both legal and practical,” according to an investigative report by the non-profit news organization, ProPublica. In a December 23, 2020 news story by reporter Isaac Arnsdorf, based upon an analysis of court records, ProPublica details a pattern of government secrecy, deceit, and misconduct during the course of conducting more executions in five months…
Executions
Upcoming Executions
,Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 04, 2021
Federal Appeals Court Reverses Block on Lisa Montgomery Execution, Dustin Higgs Execution Hits Snag
One week before the federal government intends to put three prisoners to death, two of the scheduled executions remain in doubt after rulings by federal courts in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. The scheduled January 12, 2021 execution of Lisa Montgomery (pictured, left) appeared to be back on after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed a district court ruling that had vacated her execution date. At the same time, the scheduled January 15, 2021 execution of…
Research
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 21, 2020
Federal Prisoners Facing Execution Contract COVID-19 in Outbreak Spread by Prior Executions
Two men scheduled for execution by the federal government in January 2021 are among the federal death-row prisoners who have tested positive for COVID-19 at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. Lawyers for Corey Johnson (pictured, left) and Dustin Higgs (pictured, below), announced that they had been notified by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) that their clients had contracted the coronavirus, amidst an outbreak of the disease at the prison in the wake of the federal…
Research
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 07, 2020
Prosecutors Call for Ending Federal Executions
Saying “our nation’s long experiment with the death penalty has failed,” a coalition of nearly 100 criminal justice officials is calling on the federal government to halt the five executions currently scheduled for December 2020 and January 2021 and to end its use of the death penalty. In a joint statement released on December 3, 2020, 95 current and former prosecutors, U.S. Attorneys, police chiefs, and sheriffs wrote that the U.S. death penalty process “is broken, implicates systemic racism…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Nov 23, 2020
Trump Administration Presses Forward with Death Penalty Despite Election Defeat, Announcing 3 More Death Warrants and More Capital Prosecutions
Despite its defeat at the polls on November 3, the Trump administration is pressing forward with efforts to conduct an historically unprecedented number of lame duck executions and in announcing new federal capital prosecutions that it will not be in position to carry out. After the close of business on Friday, November 20, 2020, one day after carrying out the first execution during a presidential transition period in more than a century, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced its intention…