After the failure of multiple remedies, a man sentenced to death for a federal crime was executed in the United States on Thursday. It is the second execution in a series of four sentences, which relaunch, after 17 years of interruption, federal executions by the government of Donald Trump.
Wesley Purkey, 68, died at 8:19 am local time of a lethal dose of pentobarbital, a potent anesthetic, at Terre Haute federal prison in northern Indiana, the Department of Justice said in a short statement . He was convicted in 2003 of raping and stabbing a 16-year-old girl five years earlier, before dismembering her and burning her body, then throwing the ashes into a septic tank.
Appeals dismissed overnight
It is the second death row inmate to be executed after the US government decided to end the moratorium on federal executions that had been in effect since 2003. The first took place Tuesday morning in Haute Pierre prison. Daniel Lee, 47, was executed for the murder of a couple and their eight-year-old daughter in 1996 while he was an activist with a white supremacist group.
The execution of Wesley Purkey, initially scheduled for Wednesday at 4 p.m. local time, was delayed by multiple legal appeals filed by his lawyers and relatives who also seized the Supreme Court. They claimed in particular that the condemned man did not have a “rational understanding” of his execution because he is suffering from Alzheimer's disease and suffers from schizophrenia. During the night, the high court rejected by 5 votes to 4 their request to stay the execution.
A “dark period” for the country
"I deeply regret the pain and suffering I caused the family of Jennifer," said Wesley Purkey before dying, according to local daily IndyStar . "This sanitized murder serves no purpose," he added. The powerful civil rights organization ACLU denounced a “shameful” execution which “marks a really dark period for our country”. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said, on the contrary, in a statement that his execution was "just punishment".
Most crimes committed in the United States are tried at the state level, some of which carry the death penalty, but the federal courts can deal with the most serious acts. Justice Minister Bill Barr last year announced the resumption of federal executions, echoing the will of Donald Trump.
Four federal executions have been scheduled by the department: the next is scheduled for Friday and the last on August 28. Before Daniel Lee, only three people had been executed at the federal level since the reinstatement of this sentence in 1988, including Timothy McVeigh, responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing (168 dead in 1995) in 2001.
People
Kim Kardashian pays tribute to Nathaniel Woods executed in Alabama
World
Woman asks Donald Trump to spare daughter and granddaughter murderer
- Donald trump
- Execution
- United States
- World