Wesley Purkey Execution Temporarily Halted as Challenges Pending on Mental Competency, Health Danger to Religious Advisor, and Ineffective Representation

Lawyers for Wesley Purkey (pictured), the second of three federal death-row prisoners scheduled to be executed during the week of July 13, are seeking to halt his execution, arguing that mental illness and dementia have left him mentally incompetent. As Purkey challenges the constitutionality of his execution, his spiritual advisor, Rev. Dale Hartkemeyer, is seeking to move back the execution until the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. Hartkemeyer’s lawsuit asserts that conducting the execution during the pandemic infringes on his rights as an execution witness by forcing him to either betray his religious obligation to minister to Purkey in his final hours or to risk his life and health by travelling to Terre Haute, Indiana and participating in the execution during a raging pandemic.

As of 4:30 p.m. Eastern on July 15, Purkey’s scheduled execution date, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia had granted a preliminary injunction halting his execution based on his claim of mental incompetency and a second injunction halting the three remaining executions based on prisoners' challenges to the federal execution protocol. Federal prosecutors have appealed both orders. Department of Justice lawyers are also seeking to lift a temporary stay of execution issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which declined on procedural grounds to review Purkey’s claims of ineffective representation, but found the ineffectiveness claim sufficiently worrisome and the procedural issues sufficiently novel that it delayed finalizing its action until Purkey could seek further review of the issues.

Federal Government Ends Death Penalty Hiatus With Rushed Early-Morning Execution of Daniel Lee

The U.S. federal government ended its 17-year hiatus between executions on July 14, 2020, putting Daniel Lewis Lee (pictured) to death moments after overnight rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated prior court orders that had placed the execution on hold. Two more executions are scheduled this week, with a fourth set for August.

Although Lee’s death warrant expired at midnight on July 13, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) attempted to start his execution at 4:00 a.m. on the 14th, after the U.S. Supreme Court had vacated a preliminary injunction entered by a federal district court in Washington, D.C. Notified by defense counsel that a stay of execution was still in effect from an Arkansas federal court ruling in December 2019, the BOP left Lee strapped to the execution gurney for four hours while federal prosecutors filed motions in the Eighth Circuit to terminate the stay. The appeals court lifted the stay at 6:36 a.m. Central time, 7:36 a.m. in the execution chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana. Federal law requires the Bureau of Prisons to set a new execution date if a stay of execution is lifted after a prior death warrant expires. But without notifying defense counsel, the BOP commenced the execution, injecting Lee with a fatal dose of the drug pentobarbital. He was pronounced dead at 8:07 a.m. Eastern.

The Bureau of Prisons released a one-page document it said had provided Lee with the required legal notice of his new execution date, though he was provided no opportunity to speak with counsel or contest the BOP’s adherence to required protocols before he was executed. “The federal government just executed a prisoner in violation of the law,” DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham said. “And if their actions could be construed as complying with federal regulations, the regulations were unconstitutional.”

According to a statement by Lee’s attorney, Ruth Friedman, Lee was executed with multiple motions in his case still pending, and without notice to his attorneys. Friedman wrote, “It is shameful that the government saw fit to carry out this execution during a pandemic. It is shameful that the government saw fit to carry out this execution when counsel for Danny Lee could not be present with him, and when the judges in his case and even the family of his victims urged against it. And it is beyond shameful that the government, in the end, carried out this execution in haste, in the middle of the night, while the country was sleeping. We hope that upon awakening, the country will be as outraged as we are.”

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