In the United States, the Supreme Court paved the way for the second federal execution within a week. The court today denied an appeal against the execution of Wesley Ira Purkey, a federal inmate. Earlier, a district court had previously stopped yesterday’s 68-year-old execution in Terre Haute prison in Indiana. Previously, a federal death sentence was carried out on Tuesday for the first time in 17 years.
Purkey was convicted in 2003 for raping and murdering 16-year-old Jennifer Long in 1998. He is also said to have beaten an 80-year-old woman to death with a hammer. The inmate’s lawyers tried to prevent his execution. They argued that Purkey was mentally disabled and unable to understand why he should be executed.
Purkey’s lawyer Rebecca Woodman described him as „a severely brain-damaged and mentally ill man suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease and dementia“. Although he has long been responsible for his crime, he has no rational understanding of why the government plans to execute him, Woodman said. Purkey is said to be executed with a lethal injection.
Resumption of executions decided in June
The government of US President Donald Trump only decided to resume federal executions in June. Most criminal cases in the United States are heard in federal states, but some trials take place in federal courts.
These include hate crimes, a number of particularly serious crimes, and crimes committed on military facilities or in reserves of the indigenous population.
Since 1988, there have been only three federal executions of the death penalty. Among others, Timothy McVeigh was executed in 2001, who killed 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
