Yahoo Finance Last US federal inmate facing death under Donald Trump’s presidency in clemency plea
Campaigners are calling for Dustin Higgs to be spared his life ahead of the US prisoner’s scheduled execution on Friday for killing three women.
Nearly 1.8 million people have signed a petition pleading that Higgs, 48, should not be put to death.
The last death row inmate facing federal execution before President Donald Trump leaves office was scheduled to be executive at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
His lawyers have argued it is "arbitrary and inequitable" to execute Higgs while the man who pulled the trigger, Willis Haynes, was spared a death sentence.
However, the federal judge who presided over Higgs' trial two decades ago says he "merits little compassion."
"He received a fair trial and was convicted and sentenced to death by a unanimous jury for a despicable crime," U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte wrote in a December 29 ruling.
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 Tanji Jackson, 21
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 Tanji 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.
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, D.C., and drove them to Higgs' apartment in Laurel, Maryland, to drink alcohol and listen to music.
Before dawn the next morning, an argument between Higgs and Ms Jackson prompted her to grab a knife in the kitchen before Haynes persuaded her to drop it.
Gloria said Ms Jackson made threats as she left the apartment with the other women and appeared to write down the license plate number of Higgs' van, angering him. The three men chased after the women in Higgs' van. Haynes persuaded them to get into the vehicle.
Instead of taking them home, Higgs drove them to a secluded spot in the Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge.
"Aware at that point that something was amiss, one of the women asked if they were going to have to `walk from here' and Higgs responded 'something like that,"' said an appeals court ruling upholding Higgs's death sentence.
Higgs handed his pistol to Haynes, who shot all three women outside the van before the men left, Gloria testified.
"Gloria turned to ask Higgs what he was doing, but saw Higgs holding the steering wheel and watching the shootings from the rearview mirror," said the 2013 ruling by a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The jurors who convicted Haynes failed to reach a unanimous verdict on whether to impose a death sentence. A different jury convicted Higgs and returned a death sentence after a separate trial. Gloria pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to the murders and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Higgs has argued that his death sentence must be thrown out because jurors failed to consider it as a "mitigating factor" that Haynes was convicted of identical charges but sentenced to life in prison.
Defence attorneys won temporary stays of execution this week for Higgs and another inmate, Corey Johnson, after arguing that their recent Covid-19 infections put them at greater risk of unnecessary suffering during the lethal injections. But higher courts overruled those decisions, allowing the executions to go forward, and Johnson was executed on Thursday night.
A change.org petition claiming he is innocent and pleading for his life to be spared has been signed by nearly 1.8million people.
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