The Trump administration said it would resume executions of federal death row inmates, starting with five men who have been convicted of killing children.
No one on federal death row has been executed since 2003, but on Thursday, William P. Barr, the attorney general, announced that the government was resuming executions, starting with five men convicted of killing children.
The men, whose ages range from 37 to 67, have each been convicted of heinous crimes, and together have been involved in the slayings of 13 victims. The cases fell under federal jurisdiction because of how or where they were carried out.
All five are being held at a high-security federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., where their executions are set for December and January. More executions will be scheduled, the Justice Department said in a statement. There are 62 people who are facing death sentences, according to the Bureau of Prisons, including the five whose execution dates were announced Thursday.
Here is a look at the five men and the crimes they committed.
Lezmond Mitchell, 37, who killed a woman and her granddaughter
Mr. Mitchell was convicted in 2003 of killing a grandmother and her 9-year-old granddaughter within the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona.
Major crimes within the Navajo Nation fall under federal jurisdiction when either the perpetrators or victims — or, as in this case, both — are members of the nation. A jury decided that Mr. Mitchell should face the death penalty.
Mr. Mitchell and a friend were hitchhiking near the border with New Mexico when they were picked up by the 63-year-old grandmother, Alyce Slim, who was with her granddaughter, Tiffany Lee, according to The Santa Fe New Mexican.
The two men stabbed her to death and then killed her granddaughter after forcing the child to sit near her grandmother’s body while they drove 30 to 40 miles, according to the Justice Department. They later used the grandmother’s truck in a robbery, The New Mexican reported.
The Justice Department has scheduled Mr. Mitchell’s execution for Dec. 11.
Wesley Purkey, 67, who killed a 16-year-old girl and an 80-year-old woman
Mr. Purkey, of Lansing, Kan., kidnapped a 16-year-old girl, Jennifer Long, in Kansas City, Mo., and brought her to his house, where he raped her repeatedly and, after killing her, dismembered and burned her body.
The Kansas City Star reported last year that the girl’s murder in 1998 was nearly forgotten until one of her childhood friends contacted a true crime podcast, which featured her in an episode. Federal prosecutors pursued the case because Mr. Purkey had brought the teenager across state lines, from Missouri to Kansas.
Mr. Purkey was sentenced to death for the crime of kidnapping a child resulting in the child’s death, according to the Justice Department.
Months before that murder, Mr. Purkey had used a hammer to kill Mary Bales, an 80-year-old woman who suffered from polio. It was after he was convicted of that slaying in state court that he began talking about killing the teenager, and eventually confessed, although he retracted his admission once prosecutors sought the death penalty, according to The Star.
Rebecca Woodman, a lawyer now representing Mr. Purkey, said her client experienced a horrific childhood and was inadequately represented during his trial. Ms. Woodman said Mr. Purkey has dementia and other mental and physical disabilities.
His execution is scheduled for Dec. 13.
Daniel Lee, 46, who wanted to create a white republic
Daniel Lee, a white supremacist who lived in Oklahoma, was convicted in 1999 of murdering an Arkansas gun dealer, William Mueller, as well as his wife, Nancy Mueller, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell.
Mr. Lee broke into the family’s home in Tilly, Ark., in January 1996 with an accomplice, Chevie Kehoe, and together they suffocated the family before throwing them into the Illinois Bayou, according to the Justice Department. The bodies were not found until June, when a woman who was fishing discovered a shoe and a bone.
Mr. Kehoe had stepped in when Mr. Lee said he could not kill a child, The New York Times reported in an article about the murders in 1999, although Mr. Lee was convicted of three counts of murder.
In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Lee’s lawyer, Morris Moon, said Mr. Kehoe “was alone responsible for the death of the child in this case” and added that he believed that executing his client would be a “grave injustice.”
The case was a federal one because Mr. Lee was accused, and later convicted, of three counts of murder to aid racketeering, a federal crime. Mr. Lee is known as “Cyclops” because he lost an eye in a bar fight, according to the 1999 article. His execution has been scheduled for Dec. 9.
Alfred Bourgeois, 55, who tortured and killed his daughter
Mr. Bourgeois, a trucker from La Place, La., was sentenced to death in 2004 after he was convicted of murdering his 2-year-old daughter at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, making it a federal crime.
At his trial, eight people who knew Mr. Bourgeois, including family members, said they had been threatened or assaulted by him, according to The Plainview Daily Herald in Texas. They said he had tortured and repeatedly beaten his daughter, referred to as “JG” in court documents, in the months before killing her in June 2002.
“Bourgeois preyed on an innocent child — one of the most vulnerable among us,” Ryan K. Patrick, the United States attorney for the Southern District of Texas, said in a statement on Thursday. “She should have been protected and loved, but was instead robbed of her young life after being brutalized by her very own.”
Of the five men whom the Justice Department said it wanted to execute, Mr. Bourgeois is the only one who is black, even though the federal death row is composed of a disproportionate number of black men, adding to criticism that jurors disproportionately favor the death penalty for black defendants. The Justice Department is seeking to execute Mr. Bourgeois on Jan. 13.
Dustin Honken, 51, convicted of killing five people, including two children
Mr. Honken, of Mason City, Iowa, killed five people in 1993 with the help of his girlfriend, who was once one of only two women on federal death row.
Described as the kingpin of a methamphetamine operation, Mr. Honken killed two men who were fellow drug dealers, Terry DeGeus and Gregory Nicholson, as well as Mr. Nicholson’s girlfriend, Lori Duncan, and her two daughters, ages 6 and 10.
The Justice Department said the two men had planned to testify against Mr. Honken.
Iowa does not have the death penalty, but Mr. Honken was found guilty of 17 federal crimes — including tampering with witnesses, conspiracy to commit murder, and multiple counts of a federal crime known as the kingpin statute — which meant he could be executed by the federal government. His execution is scheduled for Jan. 15.
Source: New York Times, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, July 25, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde