Judge halts execution amid claims Kansas inmate has dementia and doesn't understand why he is being put to death

Wesley Ira Purkey was convicted of the gruesome kidnapping and killing of a 16-year-old girl in 1998
Wesley Ira Purkey, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing a 16-year-old girl, was due to be executed on July 15
Kansas Department of Corrections

A judge has halted the execution of a 68-year-old inmate who is said to be suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease.

Wesley Ira Purkey of Lansing, Kansas, was due to die by lethal injection on Wednesday at the US Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.

The 68-year-old inmate would have been the US government's second execution after a 17-year hiatus.

Purkey was convicted of the gruesome kidnapping and killing of a 16-year-old girl in 1998. His lawyers said in recent filings that he is suffering from dementia.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington DC imposed two injunctions on Wednesday, prohibiting the Bureau of Prisons from moving forward with Purkey’s execution.

In this 1998 photo, Wesley Ira Purkey is escorted by police officers in Kansas City after he was arrested
AP

The Justice Department filed immediate appeals in both cases. A separate temporary stay was already in place from the Seventh Circuit US Court of Appeals.

The early morning legal wrangling suggests a volley of litigation will continue in the hours ahead of Purkey’s scheduled execution, similar to what happened this week when the US Government executed Daniel Lewis Lee following a ruling from the Supreme Court.

Lee, who was convicted of killing an Arkansas family in a Nineties plot to build a whites-only nation, was the first of four condemned men scheduled to die in July and August despite the coronavirus pandemic raging inside and outside prisons.

Purkey would be the second but his lawyers are still expected to press for a ruling from the Supreme Court on his competency.

Purkey's execution was due to take place at Terre Haute
AP

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, said: “This competency issue is a very strong issue on paper.

"The Supreme Court has halted executions on this issue in the past. At a minimum, the question of whether Purkey dies is going to go down to the last minute.”

Ms Chutkan did not rule on whether Purkey is competent but said the court needs to evaluate the claim.

The issue of Purkey’s mental health arose in the run-up to his 2003 trial and when, after the verdict, jurors had to decide whether he should be put to death in the killing of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in Kansas City, Missouri.

Prosecutors said he raped and stabbed her, dismembered her with a chainsaw, burned her, then dumped her ashes 200 miles away in a septic pond in Kansas.

Purkey was separately convicted and sentenced to life in the beating death of 80-year-old Mary Ruth Bales, of Kansas City, Kansas.

But the legal questions of whether he was mentally fit to stand trial or to be sentenced to die are different from the question of whether he is mentally fit enough now, in the hours before his scheduled execution, to be put to death.

“He has long accepted responsibility for the crime that put him on death row,” one of this lawyers, Rebecca Woodman, said.

“But as his dementia has progressed, he no longer has a rational understanding of why the government plans to execute him.”

In a landmark 1986 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled the Constitution prohibits putting someone to death who lacks a reasonable understanding of why they are being executed.

Additional reporting by the Press Association.

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