Dustin Higgs who kidnapped and murdered 3 women aged 19, 21, and 23 insists he's innocent before execution TONIGHT

DUSTIN Higgs has maintained his innocence ahead of his execution for the murder of three women.

The 48-year-old is due to be put to death tonight at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Higgs is on death row for kidnapping and murdering three women – 19-year-old Tamika Black, 21-year-old Tanji Jackson, and 23-year-old Mishann Chinn – in Maryland.

He is the final prisoner scheduled to die in the recent executions ordered byDonald Trump, following Lisa Montgomery and Corey Johnson this week.

His denial of innocence centers around the fact  that another man, Willis Haynes, actually pulled the trigger.

The prosecution alleges Higgs threatened Haynes and warned him he’d “better make sure they’re dead” as he handed over the gun.

But Hayes – who confessed and was jailed for life – has denied he was threatened into pulling the trigger and called the idea “b*****t” in a 2012 clemency petition for Higgs

Higgs journey to death row began in January 1996, when him, Haynes and another friend Victor Gloria, drove from Washington, DC to Maryland to pick up the women,

Higgs had invited to his apartment in Laurel, Maryland and once inside, made advances towards Jackson, which she rejected, and the girls ultimately all left together.

Higgs offered to take the women back to Washington DC, but instead, a secluded area in the Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge,

There he ordered the women out of the vehicle and gave a gun to Haynes.

Higgs' attorneys have argued Haynes, was the sole shooter in the case and that Higgs himself did not kill anyone.

Haynes was tried separately and was not sentenced to death.

On a website created for him by supporters, Higgs argues Haynes pulled the trigger that killed Chinn, Jackson, and Black and that Higgs would never have ordered such a thing to begin with.

“I wonder if it's that I'm not yelling loud enough, or is it that the blatant miscarriage of justice of me being killed for a crime I'm certainly innocent of really doesn't matter,” he says on the site.

His claims are backed up by the 2012 affidavit written by Haynes, included in a clemency application for Higgs during the Obama administration.

“Dustin didn’t threaten me. I was not scared of him. Dustin didn’t make me do anything that night or ever.”

On October 11, 2000, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland found Higgs guilty of numerous federal offenses.

These offenses including three counts of first-degree premeditated murder, three counts of first-degree felony murder, and three counts of kidnapping resulting in death.

The jurors who convicted Haynes failed to reach a unanimous verdict on whether to impose a death sentence.

A different jury convicted Higgs and returned a death sentence after a separate trial. Higgs' convictions were affirmed on appeal.

Gloria pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to the murders and was sentenced to seven years in prison

Defense attorneys won temporary stays of execution this week for Higgs and another inmate, Corey Johnson, after the became infected with Covid-19.

They argues that put them at greater risk of unnecessary suffering during the lethal injections.

But higher courts overruled those decisions, allowing the executions to go forward, and Johnson was executed Thursday night.

Source: Read Full Article

Previous post Mexico’s president vows global fight against social media ‘censorship’ after Trump bans
Next post Variety Launches Redesigned Mobile App