Federal execution halted on dementia-related 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, Indiana, where Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death Tuesday after his eleventh-hour legal bids to avoid execution 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 that a volley of litigation would continue in the hours ahead of Purkey’s scheduled execution, similar to what happened before the government executed Lee after a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court. One of the injunctions imposed Wednesday halts not only Purkey's execution but also another one scheduled for Friday and one in August.
Lee was convicted of killing an Arkansas family in a 1990s plot to build a whites-only nation.
Purkey, 68, of Lansing, Kansas, was convicted of the killing of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in Kansas City, Missouri. Prosecutors said he raped and stabbed her, dismembered her with a chainsaw, burned her body and dumped her ashes in a pond in Kansas. Purkey was separately convicted and sentenced to life in the beating death of 80-year-old Mary Ruth Bales of Kansas City, Kansas.
Judge Chutkan didn't rule on whether Purkey was competent but said the court needs to evaluate the claim. She said there is no question that he would suffer “irreparable harm” if he was put to death before his claims could be evaluated.
“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.”
Lee’s execution proceeded a day late. It had been scheduled for Monday afternoon, but the Supreme Court only gave the green light in a 5-4 ruling early Tuesday.
Repeatedly on Wednesday, a federal judge also denied a execution-delay request from Dustin Lee Honkin, an Iowa drug kingpin scheduled to be executed on Friday. The judge said he would not delay Honken’s execution date due to the coronavirus pandemic and said the Bureau of Prisons is in the best position to weigh the health risks.
The issue of Purkey’s mental health arose in the runup to his 2003 trial and when, after the verdict, jurors had to decide whether he should be put to death. But the legal questions of whether he was mentally fit to stand trial or to be sentenced to die are different from the question of whether he's mentally fit enough now to be put to death. Purkey’s attorneys argue that he clearly isn't, saying in recent filings he suffers from advancing Alzheimer’s disease.
“He has long accepted responsibility for the crime that put him on death row,” said one of his attorneys, Rebecca Woodman. “But as his dementia has progressed, he no longer has a rational understanding of why the government plans to execute him.”
In a landmark 1986 decision, the Supreme Court ruled the Constitution prohibits executing someone who lacks a reasonable understanding of why he's being executed. It involved the case of Alvin Ford, who was convicted of murder but whose mental health deteriorated behind bars.
Glenda Lamont, the mother of the slain teenager, told The Kansas City Star last year she planned to attend Purkey’s execution.
“I don’t want to say that I’m happy,” Lamont said. “At the same time, he is a crazy madman that doesn’t deserve, in my opinion, to be breathing anymore.”