US gov’t pushes aside legal appeals, executes 2 inmates with coronavirus
https://themilitant.com/2021/01/23/us-govt-pushes-aside-legal-appeals-executes-2-inmates-with-coronavirus/
BY JANET POST
Vol. 85/No. 4
February 1, 2021
Cory Johnson was pronounced dead after being executed Jan. 14, and
Dustin John Higgs was killed two days later, at the federal death-row
prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Their executions mean the U.S. government has put to death 13 federal
inmates since July. In both cases the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6 to 3
reversing a lower court stay of execution.
Johnson was diagnosed as “intellectually disabled” and therefore should
have been exempt from the death penalty. After living in 12 different
homes before the age of 13, he was sent to a facility for children with
intellectual and emotional disabilities. He was held back in second
grade for three years, and repeated third and fourth grades as well.
“If Johnson’s death sentence is carried out today, the United States
will execute an intellectually disabled person, which is
unconstitutional,” U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James A. Wynn
wrote in dissent when the Richmond, Virginia, court voted 8 to 7 against
hearing an appeal by Johnson. It wasn’t until 2002 that the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled to bar executions of people with mental disability.
Johnson had been sentenced to death along with two other members of a
Virginia crack-cocaine gang accused of killing 11 people.
At his execution, Johnson “seemed surprised” when asked if he had any
last words. “No, I’m OK,” he said. In his final statement released by
lawyers Johnson listed the victims by name and said, “I want these names
to be remembered.
“I want to say that I am sorry for my crimes,” he added. “I wanted to
say that to the families who were victimized by my actions.” He wrote a
note that he was unhappy he wasn’t given the jelly doughnuts he asked
for with his last meal. “This should be fixed,” he said.
Higgs executed two days later
Higgs was convicted in 1996 of fatally shooting three women on federal
wildlife land in Prince George’s County, Maryland, after a dispute at a
party. But a friend with him that day who is serving a life sentence,
Willis Haynes, has admitted to killing the women, saying that Higgs did
not “order him to do it,” as the prosecution claimed.
“What are courts to do when faced with legal questions of this kind? Are
they simply to ignore them? Or are they, as in this case, to ‘hurry up,
hurry up’?” Supreme Court Judge Stephen Breyer, who voted to postpone
the execution, wrote. “That is no solution. Higgs’ case illustrates this
dilemma.”
Higgs’ last words before his execution were, “I am not responsible for
the deaths. I did not order the murders.”
Even though both Johnson and Higgs had COVID-19, the Supreme Court
refused to postpone their executions. Higgs also had asthma. Because of
potential coronavirus lung damage, the lethal injection of pentobarbital
put them at greater risk of pulmonary edema, tantamount to waterboarding.
“Even if [Johnson and Higgs] were correct that their prior COVID
infection would make their executions more painful, the brief duration
of pain they assert — likely measured in seconds, and at most around two
minutes — is still far less than the ‘suffocation, which could take
several minutes’ endured by inmates executed by hanging,” the government
argued. Two million people signed a clemency petition for Higgs.
Three dozen protesters gathered across from the Terre Haute prison to
oppose Higgs’ execution Jan. 15, as they have during earlier executions.
The director of Death Penalty Action, Abraham Bonowitz, who helped
organize the protest, invited participants to speak. Rodrick Reed,
brother of Texas death-row inmate Rodney Reed, encouraged participants
to keep building protests against capital punishment. “We’ve got to get
everyone involved,” he said.
“Executions are used as a brutal tool of punishment by the rulers
against the working class. It’s possible to change this,” said Samir
Hazboun, from Louisville, Kentucky, speaking for the Socialist Workers
Party. “But no government run by the capitalist ruling class will do
this for us. No matter which capitalist party is in power the use of the
death penalty has to end.”
Though no further federal executions are yet set for 2021, eight are due
in Texas, Alabama and Ohio.
Abolish the death penalty, a tool of capitalist oppression
Statement by Joanne Kuniansky, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New
Jersey governor Jan. 20. “An enormous machine for grinding people up,”
is how Cuban revolutionary Ramón Labañino described the capitalist
“justice” system. Labañino was one of the Cuban 5, framed…
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George H. Smith “It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain,
emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how
comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear. Anyone who claims, on
the one hand, that he is concerned with human welfare, and who demands,
on the other hand, that man must suspend or renounce the use of his
reason, is contradicting himself. There can be no knowledge of what is
good for man apart from knowledge of reality and human nature, and there
is no manner in which this knowledge can be acquired except through
reason. To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is
destructive to human life.” ― George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God