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Page Number: 14

10 

UNITED STATES v. HIGGS 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

Lisa Montgomery likewise made a “substantial threshold 
showing” to the District Court that she was incompetent to 
be executed.  See Electronic Case Filing in No. 2:21–cv–20
(SD  Ind.),  Doc.  17,  p.  15.    Based  on  expert  evidence  that
Montgomery  was  experiencing  a  dissociative  psychotic
state, the District Court concluded that her “current mental 
state is so divorced from reality that she cannot rationally
understand the government’s rationale for her execution.” 
Id., at 18.  These findings with respect to Purkey and Mont-
gomery raised significant questions as to whether their ex-
ecutions  comported  with  the  Constitution.    We  will  never 
have  definitive  answers  to  those  questions  because  this 
Court sanctioned their executions anyway. 

III 
There  is  no  matter  as  “grave  as  the  determination  of 
whether a human life should be taken or spared.”  Gregg v. 
Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 189 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, Pow-
ell, and Stevens, JJ.).  That decision is not something to be
rushed or taken lightly; there can be no “justice on the fly” 
in matters of life and death.  See Nken v. Holder, 556 U. S. 
418,  427  (2009).  Yet  the  Court  has  allowed  the  United 
States  to  execute  thirteen  people  in  six  months  under  a
statutory  scheme  and  regulatory  protocol  that  have  re-
ceived  inadequate  scrutiny,  without  resolving  the  serious 
claims the condemned individuals raised.  Those whom the 
Government executed during this endeavor deserved more 
from this Court.  I respectfully dissent.