Killer saved from death at 11th hour

A FEDERAL judge in Washington has blocked what would be the second federal execution in 17 years, hours before it was due to take place yesterday, though her orders may be reversed as the US Department of Justice challenges them in higher courts.

The Justice Department had planned to execute Wesley Purkey, 68, for raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl, despite objections by Purkey’s lawyers that he has dementia and no longer understands his punishment.

US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington issued two injunctions to allow legal challenges by some of the 61 inmates on federal death row to continue.

One of the injunctions also prevents the federal government from executing two other men convicted of murdering children: Dustin Honken is scheduled to be put to death tomorrow and Keith Nelson on August 28.

Chutkan said the condemned men would probably prevail in their argument that the department’s use of pentobarbital in lethal injections breached the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which governed drug safety.

The department has argued that drug-safety laws do not apply when a drug was intended for use in an execution.

It is the third time Chutkan has issued an injunction delaying executions in the litigation over the legality of the Justice Department’s new onedrug protocol.

The first was overturned by an appeals court in April.

The second, issued on Monday before the scheduled execution of Daniel Lee, a convicted murderer and one of the plaintiffs in the litigation challenging the new execution protocol, was overturned by the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Lee was executed a few hours later. Yesterday, Lee’s lawyers asked Chutkan to order the coroner to conduct an autopsy looking for any signs that he might have suffered during his death.

In the second injunction issued yesterday, which applies only to Purkey, Chutkan agreed with Purkey’s lawyers that his mental illness meant he no longer understood why he was being executed and should be afforded a so-called “competency hearing”.

The Justice Department is appealing the injunctions.

Purkey was convicted in 2003 in Missouri.