Kansas man who raped, killed Missouri teen to be executed

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — A Kansas man who raped and killed a 16-year-old girl and fatally beat an 80-year-old woman is scheduled to be among the first three inmates executed when the federal government resumes the practice after 17 years.

Wesley Ira Purkey, 68, of Lansing, Kansas, is set to die by lethal injection on Wednesday at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Those who attend the execution will be required to wear face masks.

Critics have said the decision to resume executions during a pandemic is political and that the death sentences do not need to be urgently fulfilled. But Attorney General William Barr says the government has an obligation to carry out the sentences imposed by courts.

Purkey's execution is expected to be the nation's second this week. Daniel Lewis Lee, 47, of Yukon, Oklahoma was put to death on Tuesday for murdering an Arkansas family in a 1990s plot to build a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest.

Defense attorneys argued Purkey is not mentally competent to be executed and that it's not safe to conduct executions during a pandemic.

“He has longstanding issues of mental illness, now suffers from Alzheimer's disease and his dementia has progressed to the point that he no longer has a rational understanding of why the government seeks to execute him,” said one of his attorneys, Rebecca Woodman.

Purkey believes his execution is part of a conspiracy against him by the federal government in retaliation for his frequent complaints about prison conditions, his attorneys said. They argued that the Constitution prohibits putting to death someone who lacks a reasonable understanding of why he is being executed.

Purkey was sentenced to death for the 1998 killing of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in Kansas City, Missouri. He...