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Thread: Federal Capital Punishment News

  1. #191
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    AP Exclusive: DOJ sets new dates to begin federal executions

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has set new dates to begin executing federal death-row inmates following a months-long legal battle over the plan to resume the executions for the first time since 2003.

    Attorney General William Barr directed the federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of four inmates convicted of killing children beginning in mid-July. Three of the men had been scheduled to be put to death when Barr announced the federal government would resume executions last year, ending an informal moratorium on federal capital punishment as the issue receded from the public domain.

    The Justice Department had scheduled five executions set to begin in December, but some of the inmates challenged the new procedures in court, arguing that the government was circumventing proper methods in order to wrongly execute inmates quickly.

    The department wouldn’t say why the executions of two of the inmates scheduled in Decmeber hadn’t been rescheduled.

    The federal government’s effort was put on hold by a trial judge, and the federal appeals court in Washington and the Supreme Court both declined to step in late last year. But in April, the appeals court threw out the judge’s order. Lawyers for the inmates are asking the Supreme Court to order a halt to the process.

    “The American people, acting through Congress and Presidents of both political parties, have long instructed that defendants convicted of the most heinous crimes should be subject to a sentence of death,” Barr said in a statement. “The four murderers whose executions are scheduled today have received full and fair proceedings under our Constitution and laws. We owe it to the victims of these horrific crimes, and to the families left behind, to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

    But the resumption comes as the federal prison has struggled to combat the coronavirus pandemic behind bars, including at least one death at USP Terre Haute, where they will take place. One inmate there has died from COVID-19.

    The inmates who will be executed are: Danny Lee, who was convicted of killing a family of three, including an 8-year-old; Wesley Ira Purkey, who raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl and killed an 80-year-old woman; Dustin Lee Honken, who killed five people, including two children; and Keith Dwayne Nelson, who kidnapped a 10-year-old girl who was rollerblading in front of her home and raped her in a forest behind a church before strangling the young girl to death with a wire.

    Three of the executions — for Lee, Purkley and Honken — are scheduled days apart beginning July 13. Nelson’s execution is scheduled for Aug. 28. The Justice Department said additional executions will be set at a later date.

    Executions on the federal level have been rare and the government has put to death only three defendants since restoring the federal death penalty in 1988 — most recently in 2003, when Louis Jones was executed for the 1995 kidnapping, rape and murder of a young female soldier. Though there hasn’t been a federal execution since 2003, the Justice Department has continued to approve death penalty prosecutions and federal courts have sentenced defendants to death.

    In 2014, following a botched state execution in Oklahoma, President Barack Obama directed the Justice Department to conduct a broad review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs.

    The attorney general said last July that the Obama-era review had been completed, clearing the way for executions to resume. He approved a new procedure for lethal injections that replaces the three-drug combination previously used in federal executions with one drug, pentobarbital. This is similar to the procedure used in several states, including Georgia, Missouri and Texas, but not all.

    Barr told the AP in November that the federal Bureau of Prisons had been testing and conducting practice drills ahead of the first execution. He would not say where the cocktail of drugs would come from.

    Those chosen were among inmates who had exhausted their appeals, and the cases were forwarded to senior Justice Department officials who reviewed the cases and made recommendations to him, Barr said.

    President Donald Trump has spoken often about capital punishment and his belief that executions serve as an effective deterrent and an appropriate punishment for some crimes, including mass shootings and the killings of police officers.

    https://apnews.com/0238930de18b029e4b31ea1114d4a0d8

  2. #192
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    Supreme Court fast-tracks death row challenge to DOJ execution method

    The Supreme Court on Thursday announced it would fast-track its review of a challenge by several death row inmates to the Trump administration’s revised approach to federal executions.

    The four inmates, most of whom are scheduled to be killed next month, argue that a lethal injection protocol that the Department of Justice (DOJ) adopted last year violates federal law.

    The justices on Thursday ordered the DOJ to respond to the inmates’ petition for appeal by the following day.

    A federal execution has not been carried out since 2003, due in part to a widespread shortage during the Obama administration of lethal injection drugs in the so-called three-drug cocktail.

    Attorney General William Barr announced last July that federal capital punishment would resume with the use of a single drug, pentobarbital sodium.

    At issue is whether the Trump administration’s drug protocol violates the Federal Death Penalty Act (FDPA), which says that the state where a capital crime was committed should determine the method of execution.

    In April, the D.C. Circuit panel ruled 2-1 in favor of a Trump administration plan to resume federal death sentences under a new lethal injection protocol, prompting the inmates’ appeal to the Supreme Court.

    On Monday, Barr scheduled the executions to take place in July and August.

    https://thehill.com/regulation/court...-doj-execution
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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  3. #193
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    Anyone want to take a guess on how King Roberts will vote on this issue? He’s been a bust on every other recent issue and gave liberalism more and more wins. He’s definitely the new Kennedy of the Court. It was due to him that DACA survived.

  4. #194
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Chief Justice Roberts could be a swing vote on this very issue. Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh would vote for resuming capital punishment of the Federal Government therefore those who have execution dates would have any appeals before them, would be decided hours or days prior to their scheduled executions being 7.00am in Terre Haute.

    AG William Barr has confirmed more executions into the fall.
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

  5. #195
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Alfred's Avatar
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    Roberts probably knows that his vote decides whether these guys live or die. And, as the Gate of Heaven slowly but surely appears more emphatically on the horizon, people have a tendency to turn to the left. So I´m affraid Roberts will cut down this DOJ effort. But the Creator, if he does exist, will probably see through such opportunistic capers.

  6. #196
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    King Roberts has been drunk on power ever since becoming the swing vote. But he's remained pretty solid on execution protocol cases (Bucklew and Price come to mind). Executions aren't DACA or the Census. It won't be nearly as politically unpopular to let these four turds get flushed as ruling in favor of the Trump Admin on the former two issues would have been. Roberts is milquetoast, but the pressure shouldn't be enough here.
    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

  7. #197
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    Any injunction this time by some liberal judge must be taken care of immediately.

  8. #198
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    Supreme Court turns away challenge to federal executions by lethal injection

    By Ariane de Vogue and Jamie Ehrlich
    CNN

    The Supreme Court turned away a major challenge to the federal government's lethal injection protocol on Monday, a win for the Trump administration that has set execution dates to begin mid-July after a nearly two-decade lapse.

    In 2019 Attorney General William Barr's moved to reinstate the federal death penalty, underscoring the stark law-and-order philosophy of the Trump administration. At the time, he directed the head of the Bureau of Prisons to execute five inmates he said represented the "worst criminals."

    The Bureau of Prisons adopted a new lethal injection protocol consisting of a single drug, pentobarbital.

    The federal inmates involved in the appeal were Daniel Lewis Lee, who killed a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl; Wesley Ira Purkey, who raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl; Alfred Bourgeois, who tortured and killed his own 2-year-old daughter; and Dustin Lee Honken, who shot and killed five people, including two young girls.

    Although the order was unsigned, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have heard the challenge.

    "The prisoners in these cases have other challenges that have not been fully decided yet, but this was perhaps the central legal objection to Barr's reinstitution of the federal death penalty," said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. "Today's ruling removes a major obstacle to the resumption of federal executions, but not the only one."

    A district judge blocked the executions from going forward, holding that the protocol conflicts with the Federal Death Penalty Act, which requires adherence to a state's method of execution. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan of the District of Columbia Circuit put the executions on hold, ruling that a delay would not hurt the government, particularly because it has waited several years to announce a new protocol.

    Chutkan said the public interest is not served by "executing individuals before they have had the opportunity to avail themselves of legitimate procedures to challenge the legality of their executions."

    Lawyers for the inmates argued that the government is trying to push the issue forward even though it took eight years to create a new execution protocol.

    "From the moment it announced the protocol on July 25, 2019, the government has rushed the process in order to carry out executions without meaningful judicial review of the legality and constitutionality of the new execution procedures," said Cate Stetson, a lawyer for the inmates.

    A federal appeals court reversed the district court.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn...urt/index.html

  9. #199
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    PROTESTERS GATHER AT TERRE HAUTE FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL COMPLEX OPPOSING DEATH PENALTY

    TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - Federal executions are set to resume next week right here in Terre Haute. This has caused a national discussion on the ethics of the death penalty. On Monday afternoon, local and statewide protestors made a stance against it, and for them, it goes beyond morality.

    Local members of the community, like the Sisters of Providence and the Terre Haute NAACP, gathered outside the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex early Monday afternoon. Those in attendance said, their message is simple--abolish the death penalty.

    Members of state agencies joined those from Terre Haute to make their voices heard. Co-Director of Death Penalty Action Abraham Bonowitx says the death penalty is simply bad policy--especially in the middle of a global pandemic.

    "It's so unnecessary and now it's even more dangerous for everybody involved," Bonowitx explained, "They're going to go into the prisons, where we know COVID-19 is a huge problem, and bring all of this to Terre Haute and spread it around."

    Justice promoter for the Sisters of Providence Barbara Battista shared her concerns as well. She says that federal executions are totally inadmissible, and there is nothing that we gain from the death penalty.

    "In fact, we lose our moral compass whenever we support executions," Sister Battista said, "Adding violence on top of violence during this pandemic is totally unconscionable."

    Protestors actually began their demonstration on Federal Prison property. However, Federal Prison employees had them move to the edge of State Road 63 off of their property. That prompted Karen Burkhart of Amnesty International to end the press conference with this message.

    "This does not somehow mean that we are soft on crime," Burkhart said, "But it does mean that we are strong on the ultimate dignity of human life."

    Protestors say the week of the executions, they encourage symbolic demonstrations rather than mass, in-person demonstrations. This ensures safety as we continue to navigate through the COVID-19 panemic.

    https://www.wthitv.com/content/news/...571650661.html
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  10. #200
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    So it's dangerous to execute during the pandemic, but totally safe to gather and protest against the executions? The Orwellian double narrative strikes again, this time giving us a soylent trifecta.

    Executions right now? Dangerous! Protesting executions? Totally safe!

    Shopping in a small business? No! Shopping in big box retailers? Fine.

    Protesting for our livelihoods back? No! Rioting and protesting for BLM? You go champ!

    Stop the ride, I want to get off.
    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

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