Judge halts execution amid claims inmate isn't mentally fit
TERRE HAUTE, I nd. — 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 17-year hiatus.
Wesley Ira P ur key, convicted of ag ruesome 1 998 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 failed.
U.S. District Judge Tanya C hut kan in Washington, D. C ., imposed two injunctions prohibiting the federal Bureau of Prisons from moving forward with P ur key' 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 whites-only 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, Kansas, 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 t here was no question he'd suffer “irreparable harm” if he was put to death before his claims could be evaluated.
Lee' s execution had gone forward a day late. It was 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 request from Dustin Lee Honk in, an Iowa drug kingpin scheduled to be executed on Friday, to delay his execution. The judge said he would not delay Honken's execution date due to the c oronavirus pandemic and said t he Bureau of Prisons was in the best position to weight he 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 in the killing of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in Kansas City, Missouri. Prosecutors said he raped and stabbed her, di s membered her with a chainsaw, burned the 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 Ba les, of Kansas City, Kansas.
Butt he legalqu estions 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 lawyers argue he clearly isn' t, saying in recent filing she suffers from advancing Alzheimer's disease.
“He has long accepted responsibility for the crime that put him on death row ,” one of this lawyers, Rebecca Woodman, said. “But as hi s dementia has progressed, he no longer has a rational understanding of why the government plans to execute him.”
P ur key believes his planned execution is part of a conspiracy involving his attorneys, Woodman said. In other filings, they describe delusions that people were spraying poison into his room and that drug dealers implanted a device in his chest meant to kill him.
While various legal issues in Purkey's case have been hashed, rehashed and settled by courts over nearly two decades, “competency is something that is always in flux ,” so the issue of mental fitness f or execution can only be addressed once a date is set, according to Dunham, who teaches law school courses on capital punishment.