![]() There are unsettling facts that characterize the cases of these six individuals, such as mental illness, childhood abuse, brain injuries, and their ethnicities, which some argue are the reasons why Trump’s administration insists on this capital punishment. Human rights activists are now fighting to save the lives of Pervis Payne, Cory Johnson, Dustin John Higgs, and Lisa Montgomery. Brandon Bernard and Alfred Bourgeois have had their executions on the 10th and 11th of December, respectively. ![]() Now, in Trump’s final days of power, other five black men and one woman are to meet the same fate of federal execution as Richardson. Higgs and another death row inmate, Corey Johnson, had been diagnosed with Covid-19 in December.Herbert Richardson’s story moved the world in the feature film Just Mercy (2019), as a former veteran whose mental illnesses were disregarded and whose life was unjustly taken by the State of Alabama in 1989. "When it did not, this Court should have. "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. "This is not justice," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent. The Supreme Court's ruling was consistent with its earlier decisions: it had dismissed all orders by lower courts delaying federal executions since they were resumed last year. "Dustin spent decades on death row in solitary confinement helping others around him, while working tirelessly to fight his unjust convictions." "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," Shawn Nolan, one of Higgs' lawyers, said in a statement following the execution. Speeding driver killed carer and left disabled pal 'learning to walk for second time' Higgs, 48, always denied the accusation he was a ringleader, saying he had been set up and was merely a witness to the crime. Haynes, who confessed to being the shooter, was sentenced to life in prison while Higgs was sentenced to death in a separate trial, a disparity that his lawyers say was grounds for clemency. Prosecutors said Higgs gave Haynes a gun and told him to shoot the three women. Higgs was convicted for his role in the kidnap in murder - the prosecution claiming he oversaw and egged on the killings.Īfter a failed triple date with the three women, Higgs and accomplice, Haynes, had offered to drive them home but instead took them to the wildlife reserve. ![]() ![]() The key argument against his execution focused on that it was another man - Willis Mark Haynes - who had shot and killed the trio at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center nearly 30 years ago. That feature of Higgs' death penalty case was among a string of concerns which had long attracted controversy and pleas for clemency. However he did not personally shoot or kill any of the three women - the man who did was sentenced to life in prison. Higgs was present when the three women were shot to death after a failed date on a wildlife reserve in Maryland in 1996. Inside Donald Trump's execution spree - with 12 dead so far and another to go
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