Dustin Higgs executed to 13th death sentence under Trump administration since July

HIGH EARTH, Ind. – The Trump administration carried out its 13th federal execution on Saturday morning since July, an unprecedented run that ended just five days before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden – an opponent of the federal death penalty.

Dustin Higgs, convicted of murdering three women at a Maryland wildlife refuge in 1996, was the third to receive a lethal injection this week at federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department resumed federal executions last year after a 17-year hiatus. No president in more than 120 years has overseen so many federal executions.

Higgs, 48, was pronounced dead at 1:23 a.m. In his final statement, Higgs was calm but defiant, mentioning the victims by name.

“I would like to say that I am an innocent man,” he said. “I did not order the murders.”

“I would like to say that I am an innocent man. I did not order the murders.”

– Dustin Higgs, executed early Saturday

The loud sobs of an inconsolably crying woman echoed for several minutes from a room reserved for the Higgs family as his eyes rolled into his head, showing the whites of his eyes before he stopped moving completely .

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The number of federal death sentences executed under Trump since 2020 is higher than the previous 56 years combined, reducing the number of federal death row inmates by almost a quarter. It is likely that none of the remaining 50 or so men will be executed anytime soon, with Biden signaling he will end federal executions.

The only woman on death row, Lisa Montgomery, was executed on Wednesday for killing a pregnant woman, then cutting the baby off her womb and claiming it as her own. She was the first woman executed in almost 70 years.

Federal executions have begun as the coronavirus pandemic rages through prisons across the country. Among the prisoners who received COVID-19 last month were Higgs and former drug dealer Corey Johnson, who was executed Thursday. Some members of the enforcement teams have also already tested positive for the virus.

It’s not since the final days of Grover Cleveland’s presidency in the late 1800s that the U.S. government has executed federal inmates during a presidential transition, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Cleveland was also the last presidency in which the number of federally executed civilians was in double digits in one year, 1896, during Cleveland’s second term.

LAST WORDS FROM DEATH LINE DETAILS

In October 2000, a federal jury in Maryland convicted Higgs of first degree murder and kidnapping in the murders of Tamika Black, 19; Mishann Chinn. 23; and Tanji Jackson, 21. His death sentence was the first in modern times for Maryland’s federal system, which abolished the death penalty in 2013.

Higgs’ attorneys argued that it was “arbitrary and unfair” to execute Higgs while Willis Haynes, the man who fired the shots that killed the women, escaped the death penalty.

The federal judge who presided over Higgs’ trial two decades ago said he “deserved little compassion.”

“He received a fair trial and was found guilty and sentenced to death by a unanimous jury for a despicable crime,” wrote US District Judge Peter Messitte in a December 29 decision.

In a post-execution statement, Higgs’ attorney Shawn Nolan said his client had spent decades on death row helping other inmates and “working tirelessly to fight his wrongful 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,” Nolan said. “There was no reason to kill him, especially during the pandemic and when he himself was sick with the Covid he contracted from these irresponsible and super-propagative executions.”

Higgs’ December 19 petition for clemency argued that he had been a model prisoner and a devoted father to a son born soon after his arrest. Higgs had a traumatic childhood and lost his mother to cancer at the age of 10, according to the petition.

“Mr. Higgs’ difficult upbringing was not presented in a meaningful way to the jury during the trial,” his lawyers wrote.

Higgs was 23 on the evening of January 26, 1996, when he, Haynes, and a third man, Victor Gloria, picked up the three women in Washington, DC, and drove them to Higgs’ apartment in Laurel, Maryland, to to drink alcohol. and listen to music. Before dawn the next morning, an argument between Higgs and Jackson prompted her to grab a knife in the kitchen before Haynes persuaded her to drop it.

Gloria said Jackson made threats as she left the apartment with the other women and appeared to write the license plate number of Higgs’ van, which made him angry. The three men chased the women in Higgs’ van. Haynes persuaded them to get into the vehicle.

Instead of bringing them home, Higgs led them to a secluded location in the Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge, federal territory in Laurel.

“Realizing at that point that something was wrong, one of the women asked if they were going to have to ‘get out of here’ and Higgs replied ‘something like that’,” a decision said from the appeals court upholding Higgs’ death sentence.

Higgs handed his pistol to Haynes, who shot the three women outside the van before the men left, Gloria said.

“Gloria turned to ask Higgs what he was doing, but saw Higgs hold the wheel and watch the shots from the rearview mirror,” said the 2013 decision of a three-judge panel of the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals.

Investigators found Jackson’s diary at the scene of the murders. It contained Higgs’ nickname, “Bones,” his phone number, address number, and the tag number of his pickup truck.

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Chinn worked with the children’s choir in a church, Jackson worked in a high school office, and Black was a teaching assistant at the National Presbyterian School in Washington, according to the Washington Post.

On the day in 2001 that the judge officially sentenced Higgs to death, Black’s mother Joyce Gaston said it brought her a little comfort, the Post reported.

“It will never be perfect for me,” Gaston said, “it was my daughter. I don’t know how I’m going to deal with it.”