Page 2 of 7 FirstFirst 1234 ... LastLast
Results 11 to 20 of 61

Thread: Dustin Lee Honken - Federal Execution - July 17, 2020

  1. #11
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875
    AG Barr orders reinstatement of the federal death penalty

    Barr also directed the federal government to schedule the executions of five death-row inmates convicted of murder

    By Daniel Arkin
    NBC News

    Attorney General William Barr has ordered the reinstatement of the federal death penalty after a 16-year pause, the Department of Justice announced Thursday.

    Barr also directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of five death-row inmates convicted of murder, the Justice Department said in a news release.

    The executions are slated to take place in December 2019 and January 2020.

    “Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the President,” Barr said in a statement.

    "The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system," he added.

    The last federal execution occurred in 2003.

    In 2014, President Barack Obama ordered the Justice Department to carry out a review of capital punishment and lethal injection drugs. The review led to what was effectively a moratorium on federal executions.

    There are currently 62 inmates on federal death row, according to a list compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit.

    The list of current inmates includes convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof.

    The federal inmates whose executions have been scheduled are Daniel Lewis Lee, a member of a white supremacist group convicted of killing a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl; Lezmond Mitchell, convicted of stabbing to death a 63-year-old woman; Wesley Ira Purkey, convicted of raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl; Alfred Bourgeois, convicted of sexually molesting and beating to death his 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter; and Dustin Lee Honken, convicted of shooting five people to death.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...m_npd_nn_tw_ma
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #12
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2015
    Location
    New Jersey, unfortunately
    Posts
    4,382
    Honken's execution date is January 15.

    https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/07/25/us/....google.com%2F
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  3. #13
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875




    Dustin Honken murder case timeline

    By Jared McNett
    Globe Gazette

    On July 25, 2019, Attorney General William P. Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to resume capital punishment by changing the drugs used in the federal death by injection protocol to pentobarbital.

    One of the first five inmates scheduled to be executed in 2020 as the federal government resumes capital punishment is former Britt resident Dustin Lee Honken who, along with his then-girlfriend Angela Johnson of Clear Lake, shot Kandace and Amber Duncan, ages 10 and 6, their mother, Lori Duncan, 31, and Greg Nicholson, 34, at Duncan's Mason City home in 1993 because Honken thought they could be potential witnesses to his multi-state drug ring.

    What follows is a timeline of events in the decades-long case which begins with Honken's arrest on drug charges related to methamphetamine trafficking.

    Timeline

    March 21, 1993 — Britt native Dustin Honken and Timothy Cutkomp, formerly of Mason City, are arrested in Mason City on drug charges.

    March 26, 1993 — Honken is indicted in federal court for alleged methamphetamine trafficking in Iowa from his residence, then in Tempe, Ariz.

    April 20, 1993 — Greg Nicholson testifies against Honken before a federal grand jury.

    July 3, 1993 — Angela Johnson of Klemme files an application for and obtains a permit to buy a handgun. Four days later, she purchases a Tech-9 9 mm handgun at a pawn shop in Waterloo.

    July 26, 1993 — Nicholson and Nicholson’s girlfriend, Lori Ann Duncan, 31, and her two daughters, 10-year-old Amber and 6-year-old Kandace, are reported missing.

    Nov. 5, 1993 — Terry DeGeus, 32, of rural Britt, another potential witness in the investigation against Honken, is reported missing.

    March 21, 1995 — The original charges against Honken are dismissed because witnesses could not be located.

    Feb. 7, 1996 — Local, state and federal law enforcement officers execute a search warrant at Honken’s Mason City home and discover a meth lab.

    April 29, 1996 — Honken and Cutkomp are arrested in Mason City for conspiring to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine from 1993 to 1996.

    June 11, 1996 — Chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine are seized from a storage shed at Johnson’s home.

    June 2, 1997 — Honken pleads guilty to one count of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine and one count of attempting to manufacture the drug.

    March 1994
    — Cutkomp is sentenced to four years and six months on drug charges. The sentence was handed down after Cutkomp implicated Honken in manufacturing methamphetamine in 1996 and in the disappearance of Nicholson, DeGeus and the Duncans.

    Sept. 11, 1997 — Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation agents excavate property in Hancock County, unsuccessfully attempting to locate the five missing persons.

    Feb. 24, 1998 — Honken is sentenced to 24 years in prison. The sentence was later amended to two, 27-year concurrent prison terms.

    October 2000
    — Jailhouse informant Robert McNeese provides authorities with two maps, with information given to him by Johnson, pointing to two spots where the bodies were located. Both were being held in the Benton County Jail.

    Oct. 13, 2000
    — The remains of Lori Duncan, her daughters and Nicholson are discovered buried in a wooded area just off Cerro Gordo County Road S34 west of Mason City.

    Nov. 8, 2000
    — The body of DeGeus is discovered in a farm field one mile west of Burchinal. The state medical examiner determined all five people died of gunshot wounds.

    July and August 2001 — Indictments charging Honken and Johnson with murder are issued. The federal murder charges qualify them for the death penalty.

    Oct. 9, 2002
    — Honken pleads innocent to charges of murder.

    April 24, 2002
    — U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett rules that any evidence found as a result of jailhouse notes from Robert McNeese inadmissible in the case against Johnson.

    Feb. 13, 2003
    — Federal prosecutors argue in an appeal that Robert McNeese was not a government agent when obtaining the two locations of the five murdered victims.

    Feb. 18, 2003
    — A federal judge denies a request to release the remains of the five victims, ruling the bodies are key evidence in the on-going cases.

    September 2004
    — Honken murder trial begins in Sioux City.

    October 2004
    — Honken found guilty of the murders of DeGeus, Nicholson and the Duncans.

    May 2005
    — Johnson murder trial begins in Sioux City, and she is found guilty of the five murders later that month.

    October 2005
    — Dustin Honken sentenced to death for the murders.

    December 2005
    — Angela Johnson sentenced to death for the murders.

    January 2006
    — Both Angela Johnson and Dustin Honken appeal their convictions to the Eighth District U.S. Court of Appeals.

    September 2008
    — Honken appeal denied.

    November 2008
    — Johnson appeal denied.

    October 2009
    — Johnson seeks new trial or to have her death sentence vacated.

    December 2009
    — Honken’s request for post-conviction relief denied.

    March 2011 — Johnson’s hearing for a new trial held in Sioux City.

    March 22, 2012 — U.S. District Court Judge Mark Bennett throws out Johnson’s death sentence. Prosecutors have 60 days to file an appeal.

    July 25, 2019 — Bureau of Prisons directed to resume capital punishment by changing the drugs used in the federal death by injection protocol to pentobarbital.

    https://globegazette.com/community/d...d0bda7154.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  4. #14
    Member Member Dirtnapper's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
    Location
    Starke, FL
    Posts
    68
    This is so nice to see that the Federal Government is back on board with executions! Time to take out the garbage.

  5. #15
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Judge halts all scheduled federal executions

    By JOSH GERSTEIN
    Politico

    A judge has blocked the scheduled executions of four federal death row inmates, effectively freezing the Trump administration’s effort to resume imposing the death penalty in a federal system that saw its last execution more than a decade and a half ago.

    The order issued Wednesday night by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan halts four executions that U.S. officials planned to carry out starting next month.

    The only other execution that officials had put on the calendar, also for December, was blocked last month by the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

    In July, Attorney General William Barr announced plans to resume executions at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. He suggested the practice had been allowed to languish for too long and said it would deliver justice in cases involving what he called the “worst criminals.”

    Barr announced a new federal death penalty protocol that would use a single drug, pentobarbital, in lieu of a three-drug “cocktail” employed in the most recent federal executions.

    In the wake of Barr’s announcement, a series of death row prisoners joined a long-dormant legal challenge to that previous method and asked Chutkan to block their execution under the new protocol until their legal challenges to it were full adjudicated.

    In her ruling Wednesday, Chutkan said the death row inmates appeared likely to prevail on their arguments that the new protocol violates longstanding federal law because the procedures to be used vary from state law. A 1994 federal statute says federal executions shall be carried out “in the manner prescribed by the law of the State in which the sentence is imposed.”

    Justice Department attorneys argued that the use of lethal injection was sufficiently similar regardless of the drugs used or other details of the execution protocol, but Chutkan ruled that the law likely requires federal authorities to adopt the same drugs or drugs and a similar process.

    “Requiring the federal government to follow more than just the state’s method of execution is consistent with other sections of the statute and with historical practices. For all these reasons, this court finds that the FDPA [Federal Death Penalty Act] does not authorize the creation of a single implementation procedure for federal executions,” wrote the judge, an appointee of President Barack Obama.

    “There is no statute that gives the [Bureau of Prisons] or DOJ the authority to establish a single implementation procedure for all federal executions,” Chutkan added.

    In granting the injunction, Chutkan noted the obvious fact that permitting the executions would deprive the inmates of their ability to pursue their legal challenges. She also turned aside the Justice Department’s claim that time was of the essence, noting that revisions to the federal death penalty protocol languished for years after shortages developed of at least one drug used in the earlier cocktail.

    The earliest of the five executions that federal officials planned to carry out in the coming weeks was scheduled for Dec. 9.

    “While the government does have a legitimate interest in the finality of criminal proceedings, the eight years that it waited to establish a new protocol undermines its arguments regarding the urgency and weight of that interest,” the judge wrote.

    Justice Department spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the judge’s ruling.

    https://www.politico.com/news/2019/1...cutions-072384

  6. #16
    Member Newbie
    Join Date
    May 2019
    Location
    Columbia SC
    Posts
    44
    This ruling that the Federal death penalty cannot be carried out in a Federal institution unless it is by a method codified in the state where the defendant was sentenced doesn't make sense to me. If you are convicted of Federal capital murder, then you should be executed by whatever methods available for Federal condemned inmates. I am certain there are reasons why the process is the way it is. Perhaps someone will comment about it.

  7. #17
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
    Location
    Tennessee
    Posts
    7,316



    Injunction stopping execution of North Iowa mass murderer Dustin Honken is lifted
    WASHINGTON, DC – A federal appeals court has lifted the injunction that put a stop to the execution of Dustin Honken.
    A U.S. District Court judge halted Honken’s and several other federal executions in November 2019, saying the death row inmates were likely to win their legal challenge. On Tuesday by a 2-1 vote, the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed that ruling and again opened the door for the first federal executions in over 15 years.

    One of those death penalties is for Honken, a Britt, Iowa drug kingpin convicted of murdering five people in 1993 as part of a scheme to silence two formers dealers turned informants. Honken was found guilty in 2004 of killing Lori Ann Duncan, her daughters Kandace and Amber Duncan, Gregory Nicholson and Terry DeGeus. The two children were kidnapped from Mason City.
    Their bodies were found buried in a wooded area in 2003 near where the current Cerro Gordo County Law Enforcement Center sits. DeGeus and Nicholson were two of Honken’s former methamphetamine dealers who agreed to cooperate with agents investigating Honken’s multistate operation.
    After the Appeals Court ruling, this case will go back to the District Court judge and could end up being ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. At issue is whether the federal government has the power to set a uniform process for death by lethal injection of if the states’ have the power to decide that process for themselves.
    To read the Appeals Court ruling, click here.

    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...4TYjMEy5WkSxT6
    Last edited by Bobsicles; 04-08-2020 at 05:02 PM.
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

  8. #18
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Trump Federal Execution Revival Back at Supreme Court

    By Jordan S. Rubin
    bloomberglaw.com

    The U.S. Justice Department’s determination to resume federal executions after a decade-plus hiatus is back in Supreme Court justices’ hands, with the filing of a petition from death row prisoners challenging the way the government wants to execute them.

    Their appeal, filed on June 5, presents the latest test for the high court on the hot-button issue of capital punishment, a subject that’s split the court along ideological lines and sparked some of the most tense exchanges between justices in recent years.

    Attorney General William Barr announced last summer that the government would resume executions, but the petitioning prisoners are fighting that move in court, raising technical challenges.

    The case, which involves several prisoners that the government wants to execute—all of whom were convicted of murdering children—was before the justices in December on a preliminary matter. While the court sided with the prisoners then, Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh made clear in a separate opinion that they thought DOJ had the better of the argument.

    Now with the issues more squarely presented to the high court, if those three justices still hold the same view, then the question could be how the rest of the court comes down on the sensitive subject.

    The petitioner-prisoners are challenging a 2-1 April ruling by the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

    An internal split

    President Donald Trump’s two appointees, Neomi Rao and Gregory Katsas, diverged in their reasoning before arriving at the same conclusion: a trial judge shouldn’t have blocked the government from carrying out the executions. Bill Clinton-appointee David Tatel dissented.

    The high court may want to weigh in, regardless which side it favors, to clarify the issue one way or the other. Four justices are needed to grant review.

    The federal death penalty act says the U.S. marshal “shall supervise implementation of the sentence in the manner prescribed by the law of the State in which the sentence is imposed.” The government’s lethal injection protocol doesn’t duplicate the minutiae of every aspect of how every state carries out executions.

    Katsas said “manner” in the act only refers to the “method” of execution, like lethal injection as opposed to electrocution. It doesn’t regulate “various subsidiary details cited by the plaintiffs and the district court.”

    Rao disagreed with Katsas’ "manner” analysis, saying that the act requires the government to follow state execution statutes and formal regulations, but not less formal state procedures.

    Tatel said in dissent that he agreed with Rao that “manner” means more than just general execution method, but he disagreed with her beyond that, saying that the law requires executions to be carried out by state procedures “not just in statutes and regulations, but also in protocols issued by state prison officials pursuant to state law.”

    ‘Grave uncertainty’

    The D.C. Circuit’s “very different opinions” create “grave uncertainty about what the Federal Death Penalty Act means and what rules the federal government must follow when it carries out executions,” said Hogan Lovells’ Cate Stetson, lead counsel for the prisoners Alfred Bourgeois, Dustin Lee Honken, Daniel Lewis Lee, and Wesley Purkey.

    “The panel’s decision, if uncorrected,” she said, “will have significant effects on both future death-penalty litigation and administrative law more broadly.”

    The prisoners’ petition argues that the circuit panel ran afoul of administrative law by adopting a reading of the protocol that the agency never advanced and by deeming the protocol a procedural rule exempt from notice and comment requirements.

    “The Supreme Court should grant review,” Stetson said, “to resolve this confusion and hold that the statute means what it says, requiring the government to follow state execution protocols.”

    The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for comment on the petition. It will have the opportunity to file a brief opposing high court review, due July 9, before the justices decide whether to take the case.

    Noting the disagreement even within the appeals court majority, Death Penalty Information Center executive director Robert Dunham said “if you’re looking for clarity, I would think the court would want to review the case.”

    Dunham said it should be clear “whether the protocol follows the law and why. And I think that benefits everybody to have clarity. When there is clarity, one side or the other isn’t going to be happy. But that’s better than having confusion.”

    ‘Unusual aspect’

    Death penalty proponent Kent Scheidegger observed that the court might not take up the case because there’s no circuit split and the panel reached the right result, in his view.

    “Normally that would indicate a denial of certiorari,” said Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

    “The unusual aspect, though, is that the odd panel split will lead to an incorrect result in a future case unless corrected,” he said, referring to a potential situation where, in light of that D.C. Circuit precedent, a prisoner raises a challenge from a state where formal statute or regulation would control the analysis.

    He said that could be a reason for the court to take the case now, “rather than decide the issue on an eve-of-execution basis later.”

    The case is Roane v. Barr, U.S., No. 19-1348.

    https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law...-supreme-court

  9. #19
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2015
    Location
    New Jersey, unfortunately
    Posts
    4,382
    New execution date set for July 17.

    https://twitter.com/keribla/status/1...992837120?s=19
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  10. #20
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2020
    Posts
    1,248
    This will probably be the only execution Iowa carries out in the Gregg era. That state doesn’t seem interested at all in reviving the death penalty. It’s just a facade put on by the legislature to make it look like they want to. Conservative legislatures during the tough on crime era of the 90s couldn’t even get it passed when Terry Brandstand was in office. He made it a theme of his campaign to reinstate the death penalty in the mid 90s. The 90s and the 2000s were definitely the final two decades that capital punishment played a relevant part in the United States. There is no way Iowa will reinstate it now if they couldn’t do it a time when you had politicians literally fighting each other on who was the more pro death penalty candidate.
    Last edited by Neil; 06-15-2020 at 09:19 PM.

Page 2 of 7 FirstFirst 1234 ... LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •