Attorney General William Barr has ordered the federal government to resume the death penalty and directed the Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of five death-row inmates convicted of murdering, and in some cases torturing and raping, children and the elderly.
The most vulnerable in our society, the children and elderly must now be protected by law. The last federal execution in the United States occurred in 2003.
The dead penalty must be applied to Daniel Lewis Lee, a white supremacist who murdered an 8-year-old girl and her family; Lezmond Mitchell, who brutally murdered a grandmother and her granddaughter.
Also Wesley Ira Purkey, who raped and murdered a teenage girl and bludgeoned a disabled elderly woman to death.
Alfred Bourgeois, who sexually abused and murdered his daughter, a toddler; and Dustin Lee Honken, who shot five people to death, including two children.
The DOJ announcement comes just days after former vice president Joe Biden announced his new criminal justice policy, which includes ending the federal death penalty.
Biden’s policy was a reversal of decades of a “tough-on-crime” approach, which is now out of favor in the Democratic Party and is blamed for racism in the criminal justice system.
President Donald Trump favors the death penalty, including for drug dealers.
News Punch / ABC Flash Point News 2019.
