A federal death row inmate – the last person scheduled to be executed by the Trump administration before the president-elect Joe Biden
Joe BidenBooker: Proposed COVID-19 Emergency Bill Is ‘Far Away’ From Desired Pandemic Aid For States And Communities Trump To Name Giuliani’s Son For Holocaust Memorial Council Role to put: report MORE takes office Jan. 20 – has contracted the coronavirus, The Associated Press reports.
A lawyer for Dustin John Higgs said he was informed of his client’s diagnosis on Thursday. Higgs was convicted in 2000 of kidnapping and murdering three women.
The news comes as concerns have increased about the rapidly spreading COVID-19 in US prisons, including in the Terre Haute, Ind., Complex where federal executions are carried out, the AP said.
“This is certainly the result of the high-speed executions carried out by the government at the heart of a global pandemic,” said Shawn Nolan, one of Higgs’s attorneys, according to the AP. “After the two executions that took place last week and another two weeks before, COVID numbers in the federal prison in Terre Haute skyrocketed.”
Higgs’s disease could result in a delay in his execution, scheduled for Jan. 15, as his attorneys are concerned that his condition could worsen. Higgs’s diagnosis means he will likely be banned from visiting family in the weeks before his planned death, the AP reports.
“Now our client is sick,” said Nolan. “We have asked the government to revoke the execution date and we will ask the courts to intervene if they don’t.”
The Trump administration has set the record for the most federal executions to occur in a presidential transition period with the recent bout of executions on death row. Attorney General William Barr
Bill BarrCruz: Mexico harms security relationship with US by undermining DEA McConnell knockout hit against Trump Biden, says he is ‘confident’ his son Hunter Biden did nothing wrong MORE gave the green light for the federal government to resume executions in July after a 17-year ban.
Should the execution be delayed until after Biden took office, there is a chance that the president-elect will suspend Briggs’s death through an immediate freeze on federal executions. Biden has previously stated that he wants to abolish the federal death penalty when he is sworn in as president.
– Updated at 8:07 PM