Justice Department schedules first federal executions since 2003 for convicted child murderers
Attorney General William Barr directed the Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of four federal death row inmates convicted of murdering children. Barr, who last summer announced new guidelines for resuming capital punishment under federal law following a hiatus stemming back to 2003, said Monday that the four convicted child murderers — two of whom had also raped their victims — will receive the death penalty in July and August. They will be the first federal executions in nearly two decades. “The American people, acting through Congress and Presidents of both political parties, have long instructed that defendants convicted of the most heinous crimes should be subject to a sentence of death,” Barr said in a press release. “The four murderers whose executions are scheduled today have received full and fair proceedings under our Constitution and laws. We owe it to the victims of these horrific crimes, and to the families left behind, to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
The four death-sentenced inmates are Daniel Lee, Wesley Purkey, Dustin Honken, and Keith Nelson. Lee, 47, was a member of a white supremacist group who murdered a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl, according to the Justice Department. He robbed and shot the family, covered and sealed their heads with plastic bags, weighed them down with rocks, and threw them into a bayou. He was convicted by an Arkansas jury in 1999 and is now scheduled to be executed on July 13. Purkey, 68, raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl before dismembering and burning her body and dumping it in a septic pond, the Justice Department said. He also used a claw hammer to beat an 80-year-old woman to death. He was found guilty by a Missouri jury in 2003 and is scheduled to be put to death on July 15. Honken, 52, shot and killed five people — a single mother, her 10-year-old and 6-year-old daughters, and two men who planned to testify against him, the Justice Department said. He was convicted by an Iowa jury in 2004, and his execution date is now July 17. Nelson kidnapped a 10-year-old girl who was rollerblading in front of her house, raped her, and then strangled her to death with a wire in the forest behind a church, according to the Justice Department. He pleaded guilty before a Missouri court in 2001, and his death penalty date has been set for Aug. 28. The Justice Department said, “Each of these inmates has exhausted appellate and post-conviction remedies, and no legal impediments prevent their executions.” The four executions are set to take place at the high-security prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, and “additional executions will be scheduled at a later date.”
The executions could have some bearing on the 2020 presidential contest. Former Vice President Joe Biden, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, changed his position on the death penalty after Barr’s announcement last summer, calling for its abolition despite having been among the Senate’s most vocal supporters, even bragging that in one of his proposals “we do everything but hang people for jaywalking.” Biden officially reversed his decades long position last summer during the Democratic primary while under pressure from his progressive base and his rivals, releasing a criminal justice reform plan repudiating his signature 1994 crime bill and calling for the “elimination” of the death penalty nationwide. Biden introduced a crime bill in March 1991, proposing 44 crimes punishable by death. When Republicans introduced their own version a day later, increasing that number to 46, Biden went beyond President George H.W. Bush’s supporters that June by raising it to 51. When Biden’s crime bill finally passed that year, it created 6 0 new death penalty offenses.
Barr announced nearly a year ago that the Federal Bureau of Prisons had adopted an addendum to federal protocol that cleared the way for the United States to resume capital punishment. “Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the President,” Barr said last summer. “The Justice Department upholds the rule of law.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice-department-schedules-first-federal-executions-since-2003
Executions Scheduled for Four Federal Inmates Convicted of Murdering Children
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/executions-scheduled-four-federal-inmates-convicted-murdering-children
Barr orders executions of 5 child murderers as US set to resume death penalty
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/barr-orders-executions-of-5-child-murderers-as-us-set-to-resume-death-penalty