Department Of Justice Schedules Five Executions, The First For Federal Inmates Since 2003

The United States Attorney General William Barr announced the Justice Department was reinstating the federal government's use of capital punishment after nearly two decades on Thursday, according to National Public Radio.

“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 Barr said in a statement which announced the scheduled executions for five death row federal inmates.

“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.”

Barr said the executions for the five federal inmates who have been convicted of murder and sex crimes.

“Each of these inmates has exhausted their appellate and post-conviction remedies,” the DOJ said.

All five executions will take place at the U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute in Indiana.

The last federal execution was in 2003 but since then there has been an informal moratorium on federally conducted executions while officials reviewed its lethal injection procedures.

Barr said the Bureau of Prisons will adopt the policy for lethal injections mirroring states such as Georgia, Missouri, and Texas, which replaces the three-drug method by using only one drug called pentobarbital.

The Justice Department scheduled the executions for December and January, which would include white supremacist Daniel Lewis Lee, who was convicted of murdering three members of a family in Arkansas.

The executions would also include: Lezmond Mitchell for the killing of a 63-year-old and her nine-year granddaughter; Wesley Ira Purkey for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl and the murder of an 80-year-old woman; Alfred Bourgeois for molesting and killing his two-year-old daughter; and Dustin Lee Honken, for shooting and killing five people, including two children.

At least five states over the past decade have abolished the death penalty, including Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Mexico, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom also issued an executive moratorium on his state's death penalty earlier this year in March.

Washington and Delaware recently had their courts rule their own capital punishment laws were unconstitutional.

-WN.com, Maureen Foody