Dustin Higgs, a Black federal inmate whom the Trump Justice Department plans to kill next month, tested positive for COVID-19 this Thursday. One day later, Corey Johnson, another Black man the government also plans to murder on its way out the door, was also diagnosed with the disease.
Per the Bureau of Prisons, the two are among at least 309 inmates and nearly 30 staff with active COVID cases in the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, where in recent months at least three inmates have died of complications related to the disease. Those figures are a mere fraction of the 31,233 people in federal prisons around the country who have been diagnosed with the virus since the pandemic began. More than 6,000 federal inmates are currently ill with COVID, and 163 others have died.
The government’s failure to protect prisoners from COVID, and the inmate deaths from the disease, should be regarded as a result of the same callous indifference to human life that spurred the Trump administration to resume federal executions in July after a 17-year hiatus.
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Should Johnson’s and Higgs’ murders proceed on Jan. 14 and 15, respectively—in one last bit of cruelty, the back-to-back killings are scheduled for less than a week before the inauguration of death penalty opponent Joe Biden—they will continue the pattern of “super spreader executions” carried out by this bloodthirsty administration.
“Resuming executions in the midst of a deadly pandemic forced attorneys, religious advisers, media witnesses, and victims’ family members to choose between attending executions and protecting their health,” the Death Penalty Information Center writes in a new report released Wednesday. The study goes on to note that following the federal killing of Orlando Hall on Nov. 18, “eight members of the execution team who came to Terre Haute from other federal facilities and Hall’s religious adviser tested positive for the virus.”
According to the DPIC study, over the last six months, the Trump DOJ has executed 10 people, more than all U.S. states combined, which collectively put seven people to death—the first time in history the federal government has exceeded the number of total executions carried out nationally by states.
With the murder of Orlando Hall, Trump became the first lame-duck president in more than a century to execute multiple people during a transition of power, a record previously held by the 19th century administration of Grover Cleveland. The last time the federal government executed anyone before Trump’s administration was in 2003.
But the DPIC report details even more individual horrors this administration has engaged in as part of its outgoing killing spree. Study authors note that “every prisoner executed in 2020 had one or more significant mental or emotional impairments (mental illness, intellectual disability, brain damage, or chronic trauma) or was under age 21 at the time of the crime for which he was executed.”
By the time of his murder on July 16, according to an open letter penned by his attorney, Wesley Ira Purkey was “so impaired by Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and brain damage that he believed he was being killed in a conspiracy of retaliation for complaining about prison conditions.” Christopher Vialva and his co-defendant Brandon Bernard, put to death on Sept. 24 and Dec. 10 respectively, were both teenagers at the time of their crimes. Pleas for clemency from the federal prosecutor and five jurors at Bernard’s trial were ignored by the Trump administration.
Family members of victims killed by Daniel Lee Lewis, the first federal death-row inmate executed by the DOJ on July 14, publicly opposed his murder and even filed a lawsuit to stop it—citing COVID as a prohibitive factor in their travel to be present at the time of his killing—which the government labeled “frivolous.” The original prosecutor and victim’s family opposed the execution of Lezmond Mitchell, who had been the only Native American on federal death row. He was killed by the government on Feb. 26. Following his murder, the Navajo Nation issued a statement declaring the federal government had denied the tribe’s sovereignty.
In the new year, despite its overwhelming electoral loss and lame-duck status, the Trump administration plans to kill three more people just before leaving office.
Lisa Montgomery—a survivor of decades of violent sexual abuse who The New York Times reports “has bipolar disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorder, psychosis, traumatic brain injury and most likely fetal alcohol syndrome”—will be the first woman executed by the federal government in 70 years. The DPIC report notes that Montgomery’s original execution date of Dec. 31 was moved to Jan. 12 because “her legal team contracted COVID-19 after traveling to meet with her and could not complete her clemency petition.”
Corey Johnson, who is slated to be killed on Jan. 14, was abandoned by his mother as a child and tested with an IQ of 69 as a teenager. A co-defendant, Vernon Thomas, was sentenced to life in prison due to his intellectual disability, a testament to the arbitrariness of capital punishment decisions.
Higgs’ murder by lethal injection is scheduled for one day later, despite even the government admitting he has killed no one. The confessed shooter in his case, Willis Haynes, was sentenced by a federal jury to life in jail. Though federal officials claim Higgs forced Haynes to commit three murders, Haynes himself wrote in a 2012 affidavit that “the prosecution’s theory of our case was bullshit. Dustin didn’t threaten me. I was not scared of him. Dustin didn’t make me do anything that night or ever.”
The lawyers for both men have issued statements noting their clients’ COVID diagnosis makes calls for clemency all the more urgent.
“This is surely the result of the superspreader executions that the government has rushed to undertake in the heart of a global pandemic,” Shawn Nolan, Higgs’s attorney, wrote. “Following the two executions that took place last week and one other two weeks prior, the COVID numbers at the federal prison in Terre Haute spiked enormously. Now our client is sick. We have asked the government to withdraw the execution date, and we will ask the courts to intervene if they do not."
“The government must stop conducting executions during a COVID-19 outbreak in the facility, and we have called on the Department of Justice to withdraw Mr. Johnson’s execution date,” wrote Donald Salzman and Ronald Tabak, Johnson’s attorneys. “Mr. Johnson’s diagnosis will substantially interfere with his attorneys’ ability to have meaningful contact with him during these critical days before his scheduled execution, and the widespread outbreak on the federal death row only confirms the reckless disregard for the lives and safety of staff, prisoners, and attorneys alike. If the government will not withdraw the execution date, we will ask the courts to intervene.”
The moral choice would be to stand down on Higgs’ execution. But the DPIC report notes that the 10 federal executions this year took place “despite lower federal court rulings that at least one portion of the execution protocol violates federal law. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has permitted the executions to go forward.”
Likewise, incoming acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen, who succeeds William Barr, has demonstrated the same pro-death attitudes as his predecessor. In a Times opinion piece in July, Rosen wrote, “The death penalty is a difficult issue for many Americans on moral, religious and policy grounds. But as a legal issue, it is straightforward.”
And so, as Donald Trump reportedly plots pardons for everyone in his corrupt criminal circle—political allies, business associates, and even his own children—his Justice Department seems likely to continue its immoral death march at the same staggering pace.
