Federal Executions Halted Over 'Potentially Unlawful' Procedure
On Wednesday, District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia halted Attorney General William Barr’s July proposal seeking to resume the imposition of the death penalty after a 16-year moratorium at the federal level. Four executions were scheduled to take place in December and January 2020, after AG Barr announced a new method of lethal injection using a single drug, rather than the three-drug cocktail commonly used in state executions. In July’s announcement, AB Barr directed the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Prisons to use a single drug protocol — pentobarbital — a potent sedative that slows the body, including the nervous system, to the point of death.
The executions of Daniel Lewis Lee, a white supremacist convicted in 1999 of robbing and murdering a family of three; Wesley Ira Purkey, convicted in 2003 in Missouri of a violent rape, murder, dismemberment and burning of a 16-year-old girl; Alfred Bourgeois, convicted in 2004 in Texas of torturing and killing his 2-year-old daughter; and Dustin Lee Honken, convicted in 2004 in Iowa of shooting and killing five people, including two of his children. All four executions were scheduled to take place at US Penitentiary, Terre Haute in Indiana. Make no mistake, their crimes are reprehensible and counter to the dignity of our society.
The inmates filed thier complaints against the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Prisons alleging that the execution protocol is “unlawful and unconstitutional” because it differs from state protocol. In her ruling, Judge Chutkan noted that the planned executions would be in violation of a federal law stipulating that death row inmates should be executed “in a manner prescribed by the state of conviction.” “The FDPA [Federal Death Penalty Act] provides no exceptions to this rule, and does not contemplate the establishment of a separate federal execution procedure,” she said.
Judge Chutkan went on to remark that the four inmates would be “irreparably harmed” if they were to be executed without being given the opportunity to have a court hear the merits of their claim. The court found that at least one of the inmates’ claims has a “likelihood of success,” and that the harm the plaintiffs would suffer if not granted relief “far outweighs any potential harm to the defendants,” rejecting the government’s assertion that time is of the essence. The court noted that it took eight years to establish a new execution protocol, since the Obama administration announced a 2011 review of execution procedures.
The Justice Department also countered that it would be absurd to require the Federal Bureau of Prisons to keep every single drug used by death-penalty states in stock in order to comply with the FDPA. The government argued that using the execution method of lethal injection, generally, is still in the spirit of the law despite using different drug protocols. The court rejected this argument and found that interpretation of the law “implausible,” based on basic dictionary definitions found within the FDPA statute. Last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit also blocked the execution of a fifth inmate, who was scheduled for lethal injection in December.
Since the federal government reinstated the death penalty in 1988, only three individuals have been executed by the United States government: Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, in 2001; Juan Garza, convicted murderer and drug trafficker, in 2001; and Louis Jones Jr., convicted of the rape and murder of a female solider in 2003. While federal prosecutors rarely seek the imposition of the death penalty, they have successfully done so in the recent cases involving Dylan S. Roof, the avowed white supremacist who shot and killed nine churchgoers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber.
According to data collected by the Death Penalty Information Center, 78 people were sentenced to death in federal prosecutions between 1988 and 2018 but to date, only three have been executed with 63 inmates currently on federal death row. The debate over capital punishment at both the state and federal levels has been longstanding and contentious. Opponents point to the racial disparities of death row inmates and injustices found in the criminal justice system, the financial costs, and wrongful convictions however, advocates have always claimed that the death penalty is the ultimate deterrent against serious crime and serves as justice for the victims and their families. Interestingly enough, some of the relatives of victims in the first case with a scheduled execution have publicly asked the Department of Justice not to carry out the execution.
In a remarkable move, hundreds of former state and federal judges, prosecutors, law enforcement and correctional officers, and family members of homicide victims have signed a series of letters and petitions urging the federal government to halt federal executions. In four separate letters to President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr, 175 family members and murder victims, 65 former state and federal judges, 59 current and former state and federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials, and 26 former correctional professionals offered their varied perspectives on why executions should not take place. Many have urged AG Barr and the Justice Department to halt all scheduled executions and undertake comprehensive review of the federal death penalty procedure in order to remedy systemic arbitrariness in its implementation.
It seems as though many of these calls for review have fallen on deaf ears.