The man convicted of shooting the women received a life sentence. Higgs was convicted of ordering the 1996 murders of three women on land owned by the federal Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland. In his last words, Higgs, 48, said he was “an innocent man.” The court also reversed the decision by a federal district judge who said he did not have the authority to allow Higgs’ execution to go forward. The government had appealed this stay of execution and the majority of the Supreme Court sided with it. Higgs’ execution had been blocked by lower-court orders involving the legality of the federal government carrying out the execution in accordance with Indiana law since Higgs was convicted in Maryland. He also said the “hurry up, hurry up” process “is no solution” because it takes a long time to fully consider the complex legal questions that are raised.īreyer also wrote about the “psychological suffering” inflicted on death-row inmates and said the many legal questions in individual cases call “into question the constitutionality of the death penalty itself.” “None of these legal questions is frivolous,” he said of the appeals that came before the high court. Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan also dissented, and Breyer, who has been vocal against the death penalty before, echoed his previously raised concerns that many of these cases are rushed through the court. Joseph of Medaille and longtime death penalty opponent, tweeted that Sotomayor’s dissent “will be remembered long into the future as one of the most thorough, resounding indictments of this administration’s reckless, immoral, illegal effort to execute as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.” The Catholic justice, nominated by President Barack Obama in 2009, said the “court has allowed the United States to execute 13 people in six months under a statutory scheme and regulatory protocol” without adequate scrutiny or resolving the serious claims raised by the inmates. She said there were critical issues that needed to be examined and “the stakes were simply too high.” Sotomayor said that since federal executions resumed, the Supreme Court has “repeatedly sidestepped its usual deliberative processes, often at the government’s request, allowing it to push forward with an unprecedented, breakneck timetable of executions.” she said: “There can be no justice on the fly in matters of life and death.” She said those executed “during this endeavor deserved more from this court.”Īnd regarding the court’s often last-minute actions in these cases. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s scathing dissent of the court’s decision began by listing the names of those who had recently been executed by the federal government. His was the 13th federal execution since last summer. 16 at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Hours after the court’s 6-3 ruling, Higgs was pronounced dead at 1:23 a.m. 15, two justices made their objections known loud and clear in dissents that called into question the speed of these decisions and even the constitutionality of capital punishment. WASHINGTON (CNS) - Although the Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution of Dustin Higgs Jan.
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