America carries out death sentence for second person infected with "Corona"

The US government carried out early on Saturday the thirteenth and final death sentence under the administration of President Donald Trump, a few days before President-elect Joe Biden entered the White House with a promise to work to abolish the death penalty.

The Federal Prison Office said in a statement that the death sentence was carried out in Dustin Higgs, 48, at 1:23 a.m. local time (0623 GMT).

After five hours of preparing him to carry out the death sentence, the conservative majority on the US Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to proceed with us and overturned a federal appeals court delaying the ruling.

Higgs was convicted and sentenced to death in 2001 for his role in the kidnapping and murder of three women at a Federal Wildlife Sanctuary in Maryland in 1996.

According to a journalist who was present as a media witness to the execution, Higgs, who was suffering from Covid-19 disease, appeared calm and unafraid as he said his last words, "I want to say I am innocent," and mentioned the three women by name and continued, "I have not ordered their killing."

The US Department of Justice carried out the death sentence by injection at its prison in Terra Hot, Indiana.

The Supreme Court had refused to ratify an order issued by a lower court to postpone the execution of Higgs and another convict named Corey Johnson, a killer with an intellectual disability, until they recovered from the Covid-19 disease they contracted last December.

Johnson was executed late last Thursday.

Higgs is the thirteenth convict to whom the US government carries out the death sentence after resuming executions last year under US President Donald Trump, who had declared his support for the punishment long before he entered the political arena.

Before Trump, the federal government had only executed three convicts since 1963.

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