Justice Department Asks Supreme Court to Allow Execution of Four Child Murderers

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court Monday night to clear the way for four federal executions, after a judge in Washington, D.C., put them on hold.

The first of the executions is set for Dec. 9. The condemned inmate is Daniel Lewis Lee, who belonged to a white supremacist organization. A jury sentenced him to death for the 1999 murders of three people, among them an 8-year-old girl. Juries also convicted the other convicts — Alfred Bourgeois, Dustin Lee Honken and Wesley Ira Purkey — for the murders of children.

Attorney General William Barr revived the federal death penalty after a 17-year hiatus in July. The attorney general directed the Bureau of Prisons to use a single-drug pentobarbital lethal injection protocol for capital punishment, clearing the way for long-stalled executions to proceed.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said that “uniform procedure” violates a provision of the Federal Death Penalty Act (FDPA). That provision says federal executions must be carried out “in the manner prescribed by the law of the state” in which the death sentence issued.

Though all the relevant states allow lethal injection, Chutkan said the word “manner” encompasses both the means used and the procedural particulars. The judge found there are technical differences between the Barr protocol and relevant state practices, such as how the catheter should be inserted. (Read more from “Justice Department Asks Supreme Court to Allow Execution of Four Child Murderers” HERE)

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