U.S. Supreme Court allows execution of condemned men with COVID-19

[webfact]

U.S. Supreme Court allows execution of condemned men with COVID-19

By Jonathan Allen

 

The sun sets on the Federal Corrections Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, U.S. May 22, 2019. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston/File Photo

 

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court rejected on Thursday night a lower court's ruling that the final two scheduled federal executions of President Donald Trump's administration be delayed to allow the condemned men to recover from COVID-19.

 

The ruling from the court's conservative majority meant Corey Johnson, a convicted murderer, is set to be strapped to a gurney in the U.S. Department of Justice's execution chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, a short time later on Thursday night to be injected with lethal doses of pentobarbital.

 

The Justice Department has scheduled the execution of Dustin Higgs, convicted in a separate murder, for Friday evening. His lawyers are also challenging his execution on other legal grounds besides his COVID-19 diagnosis, but the Supreme Court has so far allowed all executions to proceed since Trump resumed the practice last year after a 17-hiatus.

 

On Tuesday, Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court ordered the executions be delayed until at least March 16 to allow the condemned men to heal, siding with medical experts who said their coronavirus-damaged lungs would result in inordinate suffering if they were to receive lethal injections. This would breach the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibiting "cruel and unusual" punishments, the lawyers argued.

 

A split panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned Chutkan's stay by 2-1.

"The Eighth Amendment 'does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death — something that, of course, isn't guaranteed to many people'," said the opinion, citing Supreme Court precedent.

 

Trump, a Republican and a long-standing advocate of capital punishment, oversaw the resumption of federal executions last summer after a 17-year hiatus as the coronavirus spread. Death row inmates, at least two of their lawyers, other prison inmates and multiple prison and execution staff have since become ill with COVID-19.

 

President-elect Joe Biden, a Democrat, will be inaugurated next Wednesday, and says he will seek to abolish the death penalty.

 

Higgs was convicted of overseeing the kidnapping and murder of three women on the Patuxent Research Refuge in Maryland in 1996. He did not kill anyone himself, which his lawyers have argued is grounds for clemency.

 

Johnson was convicted of murdering seven people in Virginia in 1992 as part of a drug-trafficking ring. His lawyers say he has an intellectual disability that means it would be unconstitutional to execute him.

 

They have said the IQ score of 77 that was presented at his 1993 trial was incorrect, and his real IQ is even lower, within the range of 70-75 threshold courts have used to determine intellectual disability.

 

Hours before his scheduled execution, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied his lawyers' request for a rehearing on the claim that Johnson is too intellectually disabled to be executed, given the Federal Death Penalty Act bans the execution of someone deemed to be "mentally retarded."

 

The appeals court's Judge James Wynn dissented from the majority, saying that new evidence shows Johnson's IQ is lower than 77.

 

"But no court has ever considered such evidence," Wynn wrote. "If Johnson's death sentence is carried out today, the United States will execute an intellectually disabled person, which is unconstitutional."

 

The Supreme Court also rejected a petition by Johnson's lawyers to delay the execution on these grounds.

 

Johnson's spiritual adviser, Rev. Bill Breeden, visited with Johnson for several hours on Thursday and said he was still coughing and listless as a result of the coronavirus, and said he expressed remorse about his crimes. Breeden described Johnson's writing level as that of a third-grade schoolchild.

 

Lawyers for both men, citing medical experts who testified in court, say their damaged lung tissue would rupture more quickly than usual after lethal doses of pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate, had been administered.

 

There could be a period of several minutes in which the men experience drowning as their lungs filled with bloody fluids — a pulmonary edema — before the drug rendered them insensate or killed them, the lawyers argued, calling it a form of torture.

 

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in Terre Haute, Indiana; Editing by Alexandra Hudson, Grant McCool and Lincoln Feast.)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2021-01-15

 

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[JoePai]

to recover from COVID-19

 

Why waste money, get it over with now

[Agusts]

Current admin worried about them dying of Covid19 and add to terrible US death stats ...., so want to put them down as quickly as possible...!!!  Now how do you beat that logic...???????? ????

[herfiehandbag]

31 minutes ago, Agusts said:

Current admin worried about them dying of Covid19 and add to terrible US death stats ...., so want to put them down as quickly as possible...!!!  Now how do you beat that logic...????????????

There is no logic to the death penalty. "Period" as they say in the USA.

Edited January 15, 2021 by herfiehandbag

[PETERTHEEATER]

5 hours ago, webfact said:

.S. Supreme Court allows execution of condemned men with COVID-19

Wow, that's harsh but then the Trump administration have been slow to properly control the pandemic. Not too many people volunteering to be tested for Covid if the death penalty is mandated ????

[Burma Bill]

I hope the "executioners" contract the virus (personal opinion).

[Patong2021]

2 hours ago, Burma Bill said:

I hope the "executioners" contract the virus (personal opinion).

So you wish more death. One need not be in support of death penalty to oppose your view. Morally weak argument you give.

[mtls2005]

16 hours ago, Agusts said:

Now how do you beat that logic...????

 

Pro-life.

 

Right up until one is born.

 

My question: Why did the trump administration wait nearly four years to implement this policy if it's so awesome?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 15, 2021 by mtls2005

[herfiehandbag]

9 minutes ago, mtls2005 said:

 

Pro-life.

 

Right up until one is born.

 

My question: Why did the trump administration wait nearly four years to implement this policy if it's so awesome?

 

 

 

 

 

So that when Mr Biden stops the killings next week they can claim that they were tough on crime, and he is going easy on criminals.

 

Cynical and amoral - signatures of Trump.