Federal Government Brings Back Death Penalty, Orders La. Man & Others Executed

The federal government announced that it would bring back the death penalty after a 16 year hold. They promptly ordered five men to be put to death.

The federal death penalty has been on pause since 2003. Thursday, Attorney General William Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to prepare the executions of five men convicted of murder in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

The executions would take place at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute in Indiana between Dec. 9, 2019, and Jan. 15, 2020.

One of the five men is from La Place, Louisiana.

• Alfred Bourgeois, who physically and emotionally tortured, sexually molested and beat to death his 2-year-old daughter. He was sentenced to death in 2004 in Texas. Bourgeois is from LaPlace, Louisiana, according to a report from WWLTV. Bourgeois’ execution is scheduled to occur on Jan. 13, 2020.
• Daniel Lewis Lee, a member of a white supremacist group who murdered a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl. He was convicted in 1999 in Arkansas.
• Lezmond Mitchell, who fatally stabbed a 63-year-old woman and forced her 9-year-old granddaughter to sit beside her lifeless body for a 30- to 40-mile drive. Mitchell then slit the girl’s throat, crushed her head with 20-pound rocks, and severed and buried both victims’ heads and hands. He was found guilty in Arizona in 2003.
• Wesley Ira Purkey, who raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl and then dismembered, burned and dumped her body in a septic pond. He also was convicted in state court for using a claw hammer to kill an 80-year-old woman who suffered from polio and walked with a cane. He was convicted in Missouri in 2003.
• Dustin Lee Honken, who shot and killed five people — two men who planned to testify against him, a mother and her 10-year-old and 6-year-old daughters. He was found guilty in 2004 in Iowa.

All five men have exhausted their appeals.