![]() “Following the two executions that took place last week and one other two weeks prior, the COVID numbers at the federal prison in Terre Haute spiked enormously.” “This is surely the result of the super spreader executions that the government has rushed to undertake in the heart of a global pandemic,” Nolan said in a statement. On December 17, Higgs’ attorney, Shawn Nolan, was notified that Higgs had tested positive for the coronavirus. ![]() “Our highest priority remains ensuring the safety of staff and inmates,” she said. ”They’re much more interested in rushing through executions than making sure COVID doesn’t spread.”īureau of Prisons spokesperson Kristie Breshears said that the death-row prisoners who had tested positive for the virus had been placed in isolation. “It’s the Bureau of Prisons’ job to keep them safe and healthy,” she said. Ruth Friedman, director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project, described the federal death-row prisoners as “sitting ducks” in their solitary confinement cells in the death-row Special Confinement Unit. ![]() Five of the infected team members were slated to participate in the December 10 and 11 executions of Brandon Bernard and Alfred Bourgeois.Īs of December 17, more than 300 of the 1,239 prisoners at Terre Haute have tested positive, with 45 new cases recorded in just 10 days. At least eight members of the execution team involved in the November 19 execution of Orlando Hall subsequently tested positive for the virus, as did Hall’s religious advisor. The outbreak in the Terre Haute facility comes amidst sharp criticism that the federal government’s decision to carry out a rash of executions in the middle of the deadliest pandemic in more than a century flouted public health guidance and needlessly risked spreading the virus to the prison community and beyond. In a statement issued on December 18, Johnson’s legal team noted that his diagnosis will “interfere with his attorneys’ ability to have meaningful contact with him during these critical days before his scheduled execution.” Both Johnson and Higgs are seeking clemency based on significant legal issues in their cases, but their lawyers now cannot safely meet with them. Johnson and Higgs are seeking to delay their scheduled executions, arguing that the outbreak makes federal executions even more dangerous for prisoners, staff, lawyers, and others involved in the executions. The New York Times reported on Decemthat at least 14 federal death-row prisoners, and perhaps twice that number, were infected with the virus. Lawyers for Corey Johnson (pictured, left) and Dustin Higgs (pictured, below), announced that they had been notified by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) that their clients had contracted the coronavirus, amidst an outbreak of the disease at the prison in the wake of the federal executions performed there in November and December 2020. Two men scheduled for execution by the federal government in January 2021 are among the federal death-row prisoners who have tested positive for COVID-19 at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.
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