Shortly before he left office, Donald Trump reactivated the federal death penalty putting an end to a seventeen-year hiatus and executing an unprecedented thirteen people in less than a year. While the brutality of this killing spree is well-documented, the byzantine legal process through which it was authorized has received little attention. For the May issue of
Harper’s Magazine, Caroline Lester traveled to the federal execution chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, for the execution of Dustin Higgs, illuminating the brutishness of state power. As an appeals lawyer put it: “I’ve never been more afraid of the government than I was after those seven months.” The story she tells of Higgs’s attempts to negotiate with a government bent on killing its citizens implicates the entire legal system, from the Supreme Court to Obama’s attorney general. In this episode, Lester joins
Caroline Lester of Westside High School in Jonesboro received the honor from the Arkansas Farm Bureau.
Lester earned the top new ag instructor award for her work at Westside, where she has 208 students involved. Eighty students are also members of the schoolâs FFA program.
âHere at Westside weâre really fortunate to have a lot of community support.â Lester said when receiving the award from Arkansas Farm Bureauâs Senior Education Coordinator Matt Jackson. âI appreciate the support my peers have given me,â she said.
Lester, originally from Vilonia, graduated from SAU in May 2017 with a bachelor of science in agriculture education. She received a master s degree in agriculture in 2020. While at SAU, she was involved in the Agri Club, Collegiate FFA and Sigma Alpha.
Todayâs current top story salutes Southern Arkansas University graduate
Caroline Lester, who graduated in May 2017 and who was just named the Arkansas Farm Bureauâs 2020 Outstanding New Ag Instructor of the Year. We received the Farm Bureauâs annual educatorsâ award list on Monday. We werenât familiar with the names on the list but know from past experience that if the Farm Bureau is handing out awards, thereâs probably an SAU graduate there somewhere. So, we dispatched an inquiry to Dr. Jeffry Miller, chair of the SAU Department of Agriculture. Came back the message, âCaroline Lester graduated from SAU! She is one of the best students we had during my time at SAU.â We obtained additional details and included them in todayâs article. We hear it all the time from the SAU Ag Department â public schools and ag-related businesses across the region literally scream for SAU students with ag-related business or education degrees. This part