No Federal executions for 17 years and now 2 in 3 days…
Law & Crime report
The Supreme Court, in another late-night 5-4 decision on Thursday, allowed the execution by lethal injection of a mentally ill federal death row inmate who kidnapped and brutally murdered 16-year-old Jennifer Long in 1998. The Court, in vacating an injunction that was issued by a district court on Wednesday, paved the way for the second federal execution in the last three days. There had not been one in 17 years.
Daniel Lewis Lee was executed on Tuesday not long after the getting overnight go-ahead from the conservative majority on the High Court. The same scenario played out early Thursday in the case of Wesley Purkey, 68.
Purkey’s reported last words:
I deeply regret the pain and suffering I caused to Jennifer’s family. I am deeply sorry. I deeply regret the pain I caused to my daughter, who I love so very much. This sanitized murder really does not serve no purpose whatsoever.
When issuing the injunction on Wednesday, the district court began by describing Purkey’s history of mental illness:
Plaintiff Wesley Ira Purkey is 68 years old. As a child, he experienced repeated sexual abuse and molestation by those charged with caring for him. (ECF No. 1, Compl., ¶ 20.) As a young man, he suffered multiple traumatic brain injuries—first in 1968, when he was 16, and again in 1972 and 1976, when he was 20 and 24 respectively. (ECF No. 1-1, Agharkar Report, at 22.) At 14, he was first examined for possible brain damage, and at 18, he was diagnosed with schizophrenic reaction, schizoaffective disorder, and depression superimposed upon a pre-existing antisocial personality. (Id. at 5.) At 68, he suffers from progressive dementia, schizophrenia, complex-post traumatic stress disorder, and severe mental illness.
