TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – An Iowa methamphetamine boss who killed five people, including two girls, is slated to become the third federal prisoner to be executed this week after a 17-year hiatus in federal executions.
Dustin Honken, 52, was sentenced to death for killing government informants and children in his effort to thwart his prosecution for drug trafficking in 1993.
Honken is about to die from a lethal injection of the powerful pentobarbital sedative at federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he has been sentenced to death since 2005. His lawyers are asking for a final pardon, but his chances of success seem remote after The Supreme Court reversed orders from lower courts seeking to block the executions of two other men this week.
Daniel Lewis Lee was executed Tuesday morning and Wesley Ira Purkey was executed two days later, each after hours of legal disputes that the high court ended with 5-4 votes to allow the executions to take place.
Lee was convicted of murdering an Arkansas family in a plot in the 1990s to build a white-only nation in the Pacific Northwest. He maintained his innocence to the end, saying just before he died: “I made many mistakes in my life, but I am not a murderer. You are killing an innocent man.”
Purkey was executed for kidnapping and killing a 16-year-old girl, Jennifer Long, in Kansas City, Missouri, before dismembering, burning, and dumping her body in a septic tank. In his last words, the inmate expressed regret for killing Long and said, “This disinfected murder is really useless. Thank you.”
A federal judge had ordered an 11-hour delay in both executions, citing the possibility that inmates suffered severe pain from the execution drug. The judge also allegedly allowed Purkey’s lawyers to file claims that he had dementia and could not understand why he was being executed.
The Supreme Court removed those obstacles, noting Tuesday that Texas and other states have used pentobarbital “without incident” in more than 100 executions. The court made no comment in rejecting the delay related to Purkey’s insanity claims.
Honken’s execution would be the 10th in the US in 2020, including three in Texas, which executes more prisoners than any other state. Last year, 22 prisoners were executed, the fifth consecutive year that fewer than 30 people have been executed in the United States, well below the 65 executions carried out in 2003, the last time an inmate was executed. federal.
Growing up in Iowa, Honken moved with a friend to Arizona to try to get rich cooking meth, which he learned to do after studying chemistry at university. They distributed their product through two Iowa-based distributors.
One of those traffickers was Greg Nicholson, who began cooperating with investigators in 1993 after being suspected. Honken was arrested and charged with conspiring to manufacture methamphetamine after Nicholson secretly searched Honken and testified before a grand jury.
Honken informed the court that he would plead guilty. But days before his July 1993 hearing, he and his girlfriend Angela Johnson went looking for Nicholson.
They found him at the house where he lived with his girlfriend, Lori Duncan, and their daughters, Kandi, 10, and Amber, 6. All four were kidnapped, shot dead, and buried, but their bodies were not found for seven years. Honken also killed his other smuggler, Terry DeGeus, 32, whose body was found a few miles from the other Honken victims.
Honken was convicted of the 2004 Iowa murders in a trial that featured extraordinary security measures, including an anonymous jury. Honken was bolted to the floor of the courtroom and wore a stun belt under his clothing to prevent escape attempts.
The jury recommended a death sentence, and US District Judge Mark Bennett, who said he generally opposes the death penalty, agreed.
“I will not lose sleep if he is executed,” said Bennett, who has since retired from the bank. “Normally I would, but the evidence was so overwhelming.”
