#DUSTIN HIGGS INNOCENT TRIAL#
There is no ethical way to kill another human being, and even more concerning, there is no guarantee that a fair trial has been conducted to deliver an inmate to death row.Īccording to the National Academy of Science, around four percent of criminals sentenced to death are innocent. However, studies have shown that among the five methods of execution that have been used, lethal injections have the highest chance of going drastically wrong and becoming excruciatingly painful with a seven percent botch rate. currently uses lethal injections for most executions, considering it more “humane” when compared to the electric chair. It is time to revisit the topic of capital punishment and make a real effort to leave it in the past. The death penalty has been used for hundreds of years across the world, but what some believe to be a “just” punishment is unethical and discriminatory at its core. The death penalty must be put to an end, but the only way to do so is to keep our voices loud and government figures held accountable for political action. We have seen names like Bernard’s in every headline for months at a time, then forgotten soon after. We have seen waves of outcry against capital punishment rise and fall, become loud then quiet. After December 10, 2020, the noise was silenced as Bernard became the ninth person federally executed under Trump and the youngest offender to be executed in almost 70 years. Shouts and cries emerged from countless media outlets, begging for an end to the death penalty. "This is not justice," she added.In the months, days and even hours leading up to Brandon Bernard’s execution, netizens and celebrities petitioned then-president Donald Trump to pardon him. "After seventeen years without a single federal execution, the Government has executed twelve people since July," she wrote. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent to the decision and harshly criticized the Trump administration for the recent spate of executions. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to clear the way for the last-minute federal execution, days before President Trump leaves office. "In the midst of the pandemic and everything that's going on right now in the country, it seems just insane to move forward with these executions," she said. Trump ended a 17-year hiatus on the federal death penalty in July and Higgs' attorney Shawn Nolan, said there was a political agenda in the executions in the final days of the presidency. These stay were overruled by higher courts. Temporary stays of execution had been granted to Higgs, and another death row inmate, Corey Johnson, over concerns that COVID-19 infections meant that they could suffer more during the lethal injections. District Judge Peter Messitte, who presided over Higgs's trial wrote on 29 December that he had received "a fair trial and was convicted and sentenced to death by a unanimous jury for a despicable crime." Trump Admin Spent Millions Carrying Out Federal Executions In A Pandemic.
The jury heard how Higgs, Willis Mark Haynes, and a third man, Victor Gloria, had picked up the women on Januand drove them to Higgs's apartment in Laurel, Maryland.įollowing an altercation between Higgs and Jackson, the men chased the women after they left the apartment and persuaded them to get into a vehicle belonging to Higgs, who drove them to the Patuxent national wildlife refuge, the court heard. Read more Petition to Halt Dustin Higgs' Execution Amasses Over 1.5M SignaturesĪ federal jury in Maryland had convicted Higgs in October 2000 of first-degree murder and kidnapping in the killings of Tamika Black, aged 19, Mishann Chinn, 23, and Tanji Jackson, 21.
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