Feds to end 16-yr. Death Row lull
The feds will resume executions of Death Row inmates after a 16-year pause, resurrecting a problematic penalty supported by President Trump ahead of the 2020 election, Justice Department officials announced Thursday.
Five inmates convicted of gruesome murders are now set to die by lethal injection during a six-week period starting Dec. 9, officials said.
In a statement, Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department “upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
One of the most high-profile inmates Death Row is Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who shot and killed nine black people at a South Carolina church in 2015.
While Roof is not one of the five scheduled to die in the coming months, a daughter of one of his victims spoke out Thursday to say she doesn’t support the death penalty.
“Dylann Roof dying is not going to bring my mom and the other eight people who died back to life. I just don’t think it solves what proponents believe it will solve. We will still be in pain,” Sharon Risher, who lost her mom Ethel Lance in the church massacre, told the Daily News.
Risher, 61, said she’s worried the reinstatement is political.
She said the Trump administration “continues to do things like this as distractions from what’s really going on, but this is too significant.”
“After losing my mom, I had to really dig in my soul. And I decided the bottom line is, we can’t kill each other. And that’s what that is, federally sanctioned killing,” she said.
The five executions announced Thursday compare with only three others carried out since the death penalty was restored in 1988. Among the three was the 2001 execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
A moratorium was placed on the practice in 2014 when former President Barack Obama ordered a review following the botched state execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma.
In that case, Lockett convulsed violently after receiving a three-drug cocktail and even tried to lift his head after a doctor declared him unconscious ahead of his fatal heart attack.
The Justice Department said Thursday the Obama-era review is now complete and a single drug, pentobarbital, will replace the former three-drug infusion.
“Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding,” Barr said.
At least two Democratic presidential candidates quickly weighed in against the decision on Twitter.
“Let me be clear: capital punishment is immoral and deeply flawed,” California Sen. Kamala Harris wrote. “Too many innocent people have been put to death. We need a national moratorium on the death penalty, not a resurrection.”
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders vowed to abolish it if he’s elected.
“There’s enough violence in the world. The government shouldn’t add to it,” he said.
The attorney general said more executions of the 62 inmates now on Death Row will be scheduled at a later date.
The five federal inmates set to be executed are:
• Daniel Lewis Lee ,a member of a white supremacist group who murdered a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl. Prosecutors said he robbed and shot the victims with a stun gun, covered their heads with plastic bags and duct tape, weighed them down with rocks and threw them in an Illinois bayou. He is scheduled to be executed Dec. 9.
• Lezmond Mitchell, who fatally stabbed a 63-year-old woman and forced her 9-yearold granddaughter to sit beside her lifeless body for a 30to 40-mile drive. He then slit the girl’s throat, crushed her head with 20-pound rocks and severed and buried both victims’ heads and hands.
• Wesley Ira Purkey, who raped and murdered a 16-yearold girl and then dismembered, burned and dumped her body in a septic pond.
• Alfred Bourgeois, who physically and emotionally tortured, sexually molested and fatally beat his own 2year-old daughter.
• Dustin Lee Honken, who shot and killed five people — two men who planned to testify against him, a mother and her 10-year-old and 6-year-old daughters. He was found guilty in 2004 in Iowa and is scheduled to be executed on Jan. 15.