The Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge to the federal death penalty method, allowing the executions of four men scheduled in the coming weeks
The Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge to the federal death penalty method, allowing the executions of four men scheduled in the coming weeks to go forward. They would be the first uses of the death penalty in federal cases since 2003.
The court’s order was posted Monday. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor indicated that they would have considered the case.
Daniel Lee, Wesley Purkey and Dustin Honken are to be put to death in about two weeks; Keith Nelson is scheduled to be executed on Aug. 28. Each man was convicted of murdering one or more children or minors.
Ruth Friedman, director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project, is an attorney for Lee. She says there’s a myth that the federal death penalty is the “gold standard” of capital punishment systems.
“The federal death penalty is arbitrary, racially-biased, and rife with poor lawyering and junk science. Problems unique to the federal death penalty include over-federalization of traditionally state crimes and restricted judicial review,” Friedman said in a statement Monday.
“Despite these problems, and even as people across the country are demanding that leaders rethink crime, punishment, and justice, the government is barreling ahead with its plans to carry out the first federal executions in 17 years,” she added.
