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Providence Sr. Barbara Battista, holds a photo taken during her last visit with Keith Dwayne Nelson, who was executed at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, Aug. 28, 2020. Battista was Nelson s spiritual adviser and was present as he was executed. (AP/Michael Conroy)
Sr. Barbara Battista wasn t in prison ministry and didn t visit the men incarcerated at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, like other Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods.
But she was outspoken, and that s what Keith Dwayne Nelson wanted.
It was July 2020, and Nelson was scheduled to be the fifth person executed in a spree of 13 carried out by President Donald Trump and his attorney general, William Barr, between July 14, 2020, and Jan. 16, 2021.
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The sole federal execution chamber in the United States is in a place called Terre Haute the high ground in far western Indiana, named for a swath of land that rises above the nearby Wabash River. The surrounding country is in fact flat and wide, precipitously exposed to the sky.
The prison complex south of downtown via Route 150, past the dome and bell tower of the Vigo County courthouse, and after the Tire Barn on Spring Hill Road comprises the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution and the maximum-security U.S. Penitentiary, the home of the Special Confinement Unit: death row and the death house, a low, windowless building of dark-red brick on the northern edge of the grounds.
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It was almost as if the administration was trying to set a perverse new benchmark in the “Guinness Book of World Records.” It carried out more executions in six months than any other administration had in six decades. These government killings gave new meaning to Operation Warp Speed: Instead of taking the necessary measures to protect millions of Americans from the physical and economic ravages of COVID-19, the “pro-life” federal government put work into carrying out 13 executions.
I did not know the others who were executed well enough Daniel Lewis Lee, Wesley Purkey, Dustin Honken, Lezmond Mitchell, Keith Nelson, William LeCroy, Alfred Bourgeois and Lisa Montgomery to speak about them with authenticity. But I spent decades with Christopher, Orlando, Bernard, Corey and Dustin Higgs here on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana. I watched them grow into better men for themselves, their families and friends and in some cases on behalf of t