US

Trump Administration Can Restart Federal Executions After Supreme Court Rejects Legal Challenge

Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images

Varun Hukeri General Assignment & Analysis Reporter
Font Size:

The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear an appeals case challenging the Trump administration on its decision to restart executions of federal inmates on death row.

The decision to reject the legal challenge clears the way for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to authorize federal executions, the first of which is scheduled for July 13, the Associated Press reported. It would mark the first time the federal government used the death penalty since 2003.

Attorney General William Barr instructed the Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of four death row inmates, all of whom were convicted of murdering children, in an order given in July 2019. The decision ended an informal moratorium on federal executions, which are relatively rare and were out of practice for over a decade.

A district judge blocked the executions last year, ruling that the proposed lethal injection procedure violated the 1994 Federal Death Penalty Act, but that ruling was overturned in a 2-to-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit earlier this year, The Washington Post reported.

The Supreme Court initially deferred to the appeals court as well, declining to hear a Trump administration request to move forward with the executions in December 2019. By refusing to hear Monday’s appeals case from the death row inmates, the Supreme Court upheld the ruling from the lower court.

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 01: Abraham Bonowitz of Columbus, Ohio, joins fellow members of the Abolitionist Action Committee during an annual protest and hunger strike against the death penalty outside the U.S. Supreme Court July 01, 2019 in Washington, DC. The committee has been organizing the 'Starvin' for Justice: Fast and Vigil to Abolish the Death Penalty' protest for 26 years. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Abolitionist Action Committee protests the death penalty outside the Supreme Court July 01, 2019 (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The DOJ had recommended the Supreme Court not to take up the appeals case, which would have further delayed the scheduled executions for several more months, NBC News reported. (RELATED: Support For The Death Penalty Shrinks To All-Time Low, According To New Poll)

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

Prison officials are expected to move forward with the July 13 execution of Daniel Lee, a white supremacist who murdered a family of three in Arkansas. The other three inmates cleared for execution are Wesley Ira Purkey from Kansas, Dustin Lee Honken from Iowa, and Keith Dwayne Nelson from Kansas, according to the Associated Press.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel