Four inmates to be put to death after US federal executions resume for first time since 2003

New cases could change debate on justice in run up to November election

Attorney general William Barr has directed the prisons bureau to schedule the executions from mid-July (REUTERS)

Four federal death-row inmates will become the first to be executed since 2003 when the US Justice Department resumes the practice next month.

New execution dates were announced on Tuesday following a months-long legal battle over the department’s plans to execute four inmates convicted of murdering children, including one white supremacist.

Attorney General William Barr has now directed the prisons bureau to schedule the executions beginning in mid-July.

Three of those four men had been scheduled to be put to death in December after Mr Barr earlier announced justice department executions would resume.

About 60 inmates are on federal death row in the US; individual states impose and carry out the vast majority of executions.

“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,” Mr Barr said in a statement.

“The four murderers whose executions are scheduled today have received full and fair proceedings under our Constitution and laws,” he continued. “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.”

The executions come after USP Terre Haute, where the four inmates will be killed next month, struggled to combat the Covid-19 virus. One inmate there has died from Covid-19.

The inmates with execution dates are 48-year-old Danny Lee, an avowed white supremacist who murdered a family of three, including an eight-year-old girl, and Wesley Ira Purkey, who raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl and killed an 80-year-old woman.

In addition; Dustin Lee Honken, who killed five people in Iowa, including two children; and Keith Dwayne Nelson, who kidnapped a 10-year-old girl who was rollerblading in front of her Kansas home and raped her in a forest behind a church before strangling the young girl with a wire.

Three executions are scheduled to take place beginning July 13, whilst Nelson’s execution is scheduled for Aug. 28.

Lawyers for them men have decried the justice department’s decision to move ahead with the executions.

Ruth Friedman, an attorney for Danny Lee, said the government relied on “junk science and false evidence” in his case and that Lee’s case needed to be reconsidered on new evidence.

“Given all of these circumstances, it would be unconscionable for the government to execute Danny Lee,” Friedman said.

The Justice Department added on Tuesday that additional executions will be set at a later date.

The executions could become a controversial debate point come November, after Americans have considered the issue dormant at the past four presidential elections.