The U.S. government is poised to carry out the death penalty for the first time in nearly two decades, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr has instructed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to change the federal execution protocol to include capital punishment, the Justice Department said.
According to the agency, Barr ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to adopt a proposed addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol to allow for capital punishment to resume. The DOJ provided descriptions of five individuals it seeks to have executed in the months of December and January: Daniel Lewis Lee, a white supremacist, who murdered three people, including an eight-year-old girl; Lezmond Mitchell, who stabbed to death a 63-year-old grandmother and slit the throat of her nine-year-old granddaughter; Wesley Ira Purkey, who raped and killed a 16-year-old girl; Alfred Bourgeoism who molested, and beat to death his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter; Dustin Lee Honken, who shot dead five people.
“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,” Attorney General William Barr said in a statement. “Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding. 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.”
The federal execution protocol had previously utilized a three-drug cocktail; the DOJ says that it will now use just one drug, pentobarbital.
In the past 10 years, at least five states — New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland and New Hampshire — have abolished the death penalty, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And in March, California Gov. Gavin Newsom put an executive moratorium on his state’s death penalty.
In two more states — Washington and Delaware — courts recently ruled that their capital punishment laws are unconstitutional.
