[UPI] A federal judge on Wednesday blocked what was scheduled to be the second federal execution this week after a 17-year moratorium.The same Obama-appointed Judge that was overruled by the Supremes Monday. Round 2 should be overruled too and she needs a bitchslap
The Department of Justice had planned to execute Wesley Ira Purkey, 68, for the rape and murder of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in 1998. After killing the teen, he dismembered, burned and dumped her body in a septic pond. He was also convicted in state court of murdering 80-year-old Mary Ruth Bales with a hammer.
The order by Washington, D.C., District Judge Tanya Chutkan blocks Purkey's execution. In a second order, Chutkan imposed an injunction on two other scheduled executions, renewing a challenge to the government's new protocol involving the drug used for lethal injection.
I'd take him out and feed him alive to hogs. More fitting
"The court finds that at least one of plaintiffs' claims has a likelihood of success on the merits, and that absent a preliminary injunction, plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm," Chutkan wrote in her order on Purkey's case.
Attorneys for Purkey have argued his execution should at least be delayed because dementia has left him unable to understand his punishment.
Wednesday's was supposed to be the federal government's second execution in two days, after Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death on Tuesday at the U.S. Penitentiary at Terre Haute, Ind., which was the first federal execution in 17 years. A third execution at the facility, for inmate Dustin Lee Honken, was scheduled for Friday -- and a fourth, for Keith Dwayne Nelson, on Aug. 28.
Attorneys for Purkey filed a request for a stay due to their client's health. In a filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in June, Purkey's attorneys said executing him in his current condition violates the Eighth Amendment.
"Wes Purkey is a severely brain-damaged and mentally ill man who suffers from Alzheimer's disease," defense attorney Rebecca Woodman said.
"He has long accepted responsibility for the crime that put him on death row, but as his dementia has progressed, he no longer has a rational understanding of why the government plans to execute him.
"He believes his execution is part of a large-scale conspiracy against him by the federal government in retaliation for his frequent challenges to prison conditions, and he believes his own lawyers are working against him within this conspiracy."
Purkey's attorneys said two medical experts -- Dr. Bhushan Agharkar and Dr. Jonathan DeRight -- have diagnosed him with dementia and Alzheimer's disease.