Virginia gang killer executed by the U.S. despite infection with Covid
Virginia gang killer executed by the U.S. despite infection with Covid
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In spite of his lawyers’ claims that the lethal injection would cause excruciating pain from his recent Covid-19 infection due to lung damage, the U.S. Government executed a drug dealer on Thursday for his participation in a series of murders in the capital of Virginia in 1992.

Since the Trump administration restarted federal executions after a 17-year hiatus, Corey Johnson, 52, was the 12th inmate put to death at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. At 11:34 p.m., he was pronounced dead.

The execution of Johnson and the scheduled execution of Dustin Higgs on Friday are the last before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden next week, who opposes the federal death penalty and has signalled that he will end its use. Both prisoners contracted Covid-19 and, for that reason, won temporary stays of execution this week, only for higher courts to allow lethal injections to move forward.

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Lawyers have previously argued that prescription drugs of pentobarbital caused flashing pulmonary edoema, where fluid quickly fills the lungs and triggers a feeling of drowning. The new claim was that fluid would immediately rush into the Covid-damaged lungs of the inmates while they were still aware.

In one of the worst bursts of gang violence Richmond had ever seen, with 11 people killed in a 45-day period, Johnson was implicated. Under a federal law which targets large-scale drug traffickers, he and two other members of the Newtowne gang were sentenced to death.

Johnson said in a final statement that he was “sorry for my crimes” and said he wanted to remember the victims. Before the execution, he said the pizza and strawberry shake that he ate and drank “were wonderful,” but he didn’t get the doughnuts he wanted. He thanked his minister and lawyer as well.

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“I am all right,” he said. “I am at peace.”

In a statement, Johnson’s lawyers said that a person “with an intellectual disability, in serious violation of the Constitution and federal law,” was executed by the government and vehemently denied that he had the mental capacity to be a so-called drug kingpin.

“The arbitrary rush of the government to execute Mr. Johnson, who due to his significant impairments was categorically ineligible for execution, rested on procedural technicalities rather than any serious dispute that he was intellectually disabled,” the attorneys, Donald Salzman and Ronald Tabak said.

Richard Benedict, who was Johnson’s teacher of special education for emotionally disturbed children at a New York school, said that when he was 16 and 17, Johnson was hyperactive, anxious, reading and writing at second or third-grade level.

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