Justice Dept. completes final execution under Trump

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — The Trump administration early Saturday carried out its 13th federal execution since July, an unprecedented run that concluded just days before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden — an opponent of the federal death penalty.

Dustin Higgs, convicted of ordering the killings of three women in a Maryland wildlife refuge in 1996, was the third to receive a lethal injection last week at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

President Trump’s Justice Department resumed federal executions last year following a 17-year hiatus. No president in more than 120 years had overseen as many federal executions.

Higgs, 48, was pronounced dead at 1:23 a.m. Asked if he had any last words, Higgs was calm but defiant, mentioning the victims by name.

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

As the lethal injection of pentobarbital flowed into his veins, he looked toward family members, waved with his fingers and said, “I love you.” Loud sobs of a woman crying inconsolably echoed for several minutes from a room reserved for Higgs’ family as his eyes rolled back in his head, showing the whites of his eyes before he stopped moving.

A sister of Tanji Jackson — one of the victims — released a statement after the execution.

“They are now going to go through the pain we experienced,” she said of Higgs’ family. “When the day is over, your death will not bring my sister and the other victims back. This is not closure.”

The number of federal death sentences carried out under Trump since 2020 is more than in the previous 56 years combined, reducing the number of prisoners on federal death row by nearly a quarter.

It’s likely none of the around 50 remaining men will be executed any time soon, with Biden signaling he’ll end federal executions.

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

Federal executions began as the pandemic raged through prisons nationwide. Among those prisoners who got COVID-19 last month were Higgs and former drug trafficker Corey Johnson, who was executed Thursday.

Some members of the execution teams previously tested positive for the virus.

Not since the waning days of Grover Cleveland’s presidency in the late 1800s has the U.S. government executed federal inmates during a presidential transition, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Cleveland’s was also the last presidency during which the number of civilians executed federally was in the double digits in one year, 1896, during Cleveland’s second term.

Pressure is already building on Biden to follow through on pledges to end the federal death penalty. The American Civil Liberties

Union released a statement after Higgs’ execution urging Biden to invoke his presidential powers after he is sworn in.

“He must commute the sentences of people on the federal death row to life without parole, and he must drop death from all pending trials,” the ACLU said.

In October 2000, a federal jury in Maryland convicted Higgs of first-degree murder and kidnapping in the killings of Tamika Black, 19; Mishann Chinn, 23; and Jackson, 21.

His death sentence was the first imposed in the modern era of the federal system in Maryland, which abolished the death penalty in 2013.