Judge halts execution, citing dementia claim

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — A judge on Wednesday halted the execution of a man, said to be suffering from dementia, who had been set to die by lethal injection in the federal government’s second execution this week after a 17year hiatus.

Wesley Ira Purkey, convicted of a gruesome 1998 kidnapping and killing, was scheduled for execution Wednesday night at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., where Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death Tuesday after his eleventhhour legal bids failed.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., imposed two injunctions prohibiting the federal Bureau of Prisons from moving forward with Purkey’s execution. The Justice Department immediately appealed in both cases. A separate temporary stay was already in place from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

The legal wrangling suggested a volley of litigation would continue in the hours ahead of Purkey’s scheduled execution, similar to what happened before the government executed Lee following a ruling from the Supreme Court. One of the injunctions imposed Wednesday halts not only Purkey’s execution, but another scheduled for Friday and one in August.

Lee, convicted of killing an Arkansas family in a 1990s plot to build a whitesonly nation, was the first of four condemned men scheduled to die in July and August despite the coronavirus pandemic raging inside and outside prisons.

Purkey, 68, of Lansing, Kan., would be the second.

“This competency issue is a very strong issue on paper,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “The Supreme Court has halted executions on this issue in the past. At a minimum, the question of whether Purkey dies is going to go down to the last minute.”

Judge Chutkan didn’t rule on whether Purkey was competent but said the court needed to evaluate the claim. She said there was no question he’d suffer “irreparable harm” if he was put to death before his claims could be evaluated.

Last week, three mental health organizations urged U.S. Attorney William Barr to commute Purkey’s sentence to life in prison without possibility of parole. The National Alliance on Mental Illness, Mental Health America and the Treatment Advocacy Center said executing mentally ailing people like Purkey “constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and does not comport with ‘evolving standards of decency.’ ”