#Federal executions scheduled for 4 men convicted of killing children

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Wesley Ira Purkey (left) and Danny Lee
Handout; Spokane Police Department/AFP via Getty Images

Executions have been scheduled for four men who were convicted of murdering children — the first use of capital punishment by the federal government in nearly 20 years, the Department of Justice announced Monday.

Two of the men set to die were also convicted in federal court of raping the children they murdered, the DOJ said.

“The four murderers whose executions are scheduled today have received full and fair proceedings under our Constitution and laws,” Attorney General William Barr said in a statement.

“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.”

Those scheduled to be executed include; Daniel Lewis Lee, Wesley Ira Purkey, Dustin Lee Honken and Keith Dwayne Nelson.

Lee, a white supremacist, killed a family of three — including an eight-year-old girl, the DOJ said.

He tied bags around the victims’ heads using duct tape, then weighed them down with rocks and threw the family into the Illinois bayou. His execution is set for July 13.

Purkey, whose execution is scheduled for July 15, raped and murdered a 15-year-old girl, according to the feds.

Honken fatally shot five people — a mother and her daughters, ages 6 and 10, as well as two men set to testify against him. His execution is scheduled for July 17.

The last scheduled execution, that of Nelson, is set for August 28. Nelson kidnapped a 10-year-old girl from outside her home before rapping and strangling her to death behind a church.

Barr, last July, directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to employ a lethal dose of the pentobarbital for executions of five men.

The executions, however, were put on hold after their lawyers challenged the legality of a new execution protocol.

But a district court injunction preventing the executions was recently vacated by the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC.

Capital punishment for federal crimes is extremely rare. There have only been three federal executions since 1988.