TERRE HAUTE, Ind.: The U.S. government was set to carry out the 13th and final federal execution under President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday evening, just five days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office with a promise to try to end the death penalty.
Five hours after Dustin Higgs, 48, was set to be executed, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority cleared the way for lethal injections to proceed by overturning a stay ordered by a federal appeals court.
Higgs was convicted and sentenced to death in 2001 for overseeing the kidnapping and murder of three women on a federal wildlife reserve in Maryland in 1996: Tanji Jackson, Tamika Black and Mishann Chinn.
The U.S. Department of Justice plans to execute him with lethal injections of pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate, at its death chamber in its prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
The Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday was consistent with its earlier decisions: it had also dismissed any orders by lower…