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- On Friday night, the Supreme Court voted to go ahead with the execution of Dustin Higgs, who became the thirteenth person to be killed by the federal government since July.
- Judge Sonia Sotomayor has always opposed the accelerated pressure for federal executions under the leadership of the Justice Department and has written a scathing dissent shattering the concerted strategy to rush executions.
- “The Court has made these important decisions in response to urgent requests, with little opportunity for proper briefing and review, often within days or even hours,” Sotomayor said. “Very few of these decisions have offered a public explanation for their rationale. It is not fair.”
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The Supreme Court executed Dustin Higgs on Friday night, making Higgs the thirteenth person to be killed by the federal government since July.
Higgs, who contracted COVID-19 in prison, was sentenced to death row in 2001. A petition to stop Higg’s execution gathered more than 1.5 million signatures by Friday.
In July, the US Department of Justice ended a 17-year hiatus on federal executions, at the request of Attorney General William Barr. Judge Sonia Sotomayor has always been in dissent against the expedited executions of every individual by the Trump administration.
In his latest dissent, Sotomayor described the recent spike in federal executions and the resulting human toll. Justices Breyer and Kagan joined Sotomayor in dissent.
“After seventeen years without a single federal execution, the government has executed twelve people since July,” Sotomayor wrote in his dissent.
“They are Daniel Lee, Wesley Purkey, Dustin Honken, Lezmond Mitchell, Keith Nelson, William LeCroy Jr., Christopher Vialva, Orlando Hall, Brandon Bernard, Alfred Bourgeois, Lisa Montgomery and, last night, Corey Johnson,” a writes Sotomayor. “Today Dustin Higgs will become the thirteenth.”
Sotomayor put his words into historical context, saying that at the federal level, the United States “will have executed more than three times as many people in the past six months as in the previous six decades.”
Read more: Inmate who is expected to be executed just 5 days before Biden takes office has tested positive for COVID-19
Describing the Justice Department’s 2019 protocol, which allowed the federal government to carry out executions using a new drug, Sotomayor argued that, “throughout this round of expedited executions, this court has consistently rejected credible reparation claims from detainees.
“The Court has made these important decisions in response to urgent requests, with little opportunity for proper briefing and review, often within days or even hours,” Sotomayor said. “Very few of these decisions have offered a public explanation for their rationale.”
“It’s not fair.”
She mentioned the efforts of the Trump administration, lower level courts and the Supreme Court to speed up federal executions. Sotomayor criticized his colleagues for pushing executions forward, saying that “this Court has repeatedly bypassed its usual deliberation processes, often at the request of the Government, allowing it to push forward an unprecedented and dizzying execution schedule” .
Sotomayor also condemned the federal government for speeding up the executions of two men who tested positive for COVID-19 – Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs – saying a faster execution would put inmates out of their potential misery. Sotomayor dissented against Johnson’s federal execution a day earlier on Jan. 14 because he was intellectually disabled and lacked judicial review.
Six of the 13 inmates killed since July were black, and a September 2020 Death Penalty Information Center report showed black Americans are nearly 30 times more likely to be sentenced to death for the murder of a white victim than the reverse.
“Those the government executed in this enterprise deserved more from this Court,” Sotomayor said. “I respectfully disagree.”
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