TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – A judge on Wednesday halted the execution of a man allegedly suffering from dementia, who had died by lethal injection in the federal government’s second execution after a 17-year hiatus.
Convicted of a horrific kidnapping and murder in 1998, Wesley Ira Purkey was scheduled to be executed Wednesday at the US Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, where Daniel Lewis Lee was executed on Tuesday after his own offers failed. legal hours 11.
United States District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, DC, issued two orders on Wednesday that prohibit the Federal Bureau of Prisons from moving forward with the execution of Purkey. The Justice Department filed immediate appeals in both cases. A separate temporary suspension has already been established from the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
The early-morning legal dispute suggests that a series of litigation will continue in the hours leading up to Purkey’s scheduled execution, similar to what happened this week when the federal government executed Lee, following a Supreme Court ruling.
Lee, who was convicted of killing an Arkansas family in a 1990s plot to build a white-only nation, was the first of four men sentenced to die in July and August despite the coronavirus pandemic. unleashes in and out of jails.
Purkey, 68, of Lansing, Kansas, would be second, but his attorneys were still expected to push for the Supreme Court to rule on his jurisdiction.
“This competition issue is a very important issue on paper,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “The Supreme Court has stopped executions on this issue in the past. At a minimum, the question of whether Purkey dies will come down to the last minute. “
Chutkan did not rule on whether Purkey is competent, but said the court must evaluate the claim. She said that while the government may disagree with Purkey’s lawyers over his jurisdiction, there is no doubt that he would suffer “irreparable harm” if executed before the court can assess his claims.
Lee’s own execution was brought forward a day late. It was scheduled for 4 p.m. Monday, but the Supreme Court only gave the go-ahead in a narrow 5-4 ruling early Tuesday.
Purkey’s mental health issue arose in the run-up to his 2003 trial and when, after the verdict, jurors had to decide whether he should be executed for the murder of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in Kansas City. , Missouri. . Prosecutors alleged that he raped and stabbed her, dismembered her with a chainsaw, burned her, and then dumped her ashes 200 miles (320 km) away in a septic tank in Kansas. Purkey was sentenced separately and sentenced to life in prison for the beating to death of Mary Ruth Bales, 80, of Kansas City, Kansas.
But legal questions about whether he was mentally fit to be tried or sentenced to death are different from the question of whether he is now mentally prepared enough, in the hours before his scheduled execution, to be executed.
Purkey’s lawyers argue that it clearly isn’t, and say in recent documents that he suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.
“He has accepted responsibility for the crime that put him on death row,” said one of these attorneys, Rebecca Woodman. “But as her dementia has progressed, she no longer has a rational understanding of why the government plans to execute her.”
Purkey believes that his planned execution is part of a large conspiracy involving his own attorneys, Woodman said. In other presentations, they describe delusions that people were spraying poison in his room and that drug dealers implanted a device in his chest intended to kill him.
While several legal issues in the Purkey case have been settled, reviewed, and resolved by the courts for nearly two decades, the problem of mental fitness for execution can only be addressed once a date is set, according to Dunham, who also teaches law courses in the capital. punishment. Only one date was set last year.
“Competition is something that is always constantly changing,” so judges can only evaluate it in the weeks or days before a firm execution date, he said.
In a landmark 1986 decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution prohibits killing someone who lacks a reasonable understanding of why he is being executed. It involved the case of Alvin Ford, who was convicted of murder but whose mental health deteriorated behind bars to the point that, according to his lawyer, he believed he was Pope.
Dunham explained that the legal standards for whether someone has a rational understanding of why an execution is carried out can be complex.
“I could say it was Napoleon,” he said. “But if I say I understand that Napoleon was sentenced to death for a crime and is being executed for it, that could allow the execution to continue.”
Purkey’s mental problems go beyond Alzheimer’s, his lawyers have said. They say he was subjected to sexual and mental abuse as a child and, at age 14, diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, and psychosis.
Last week, three mental health organizations urged US Attorney William Barr to stop Purkey’s execution and commute his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The letter, signed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Mental Health America and the Treatment Advocacy Center, said executing people with mental illness like Purkey “constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and does not behave with ‘standards of decency in evolution'”.
The mother of the teen she killed, Glenda Lamont, told the Kansas City Star last year that she planned to attend the execution.
“I don’t want to say I’m happy,” said Lamont. “At the same time, he’s a crazy madman who doesn’t deserve, in my opinion, to keep breathing.”
The lead-up to Lee’s execution showed that a lot can still happen sooner than Purkey’s schedule.
On Monday, hours before Lee was sentenced to death, a US District Court judge suspended the execution over concerns of death row inmates about how executions would be carried out, and an appeals court He confirmed it before the Supreme Court overturned it on Tuesday morning.
If prison officials get the go-ahead to execute Purkey, he would be executed by lethal injection, as Lee was, and in the same small room in Terre Haute prison.
