(Washington) A prisoner sentenced to death for a quintuple murder 17 years ago has been executed Friday in the United States during the third federal execution applied this week after the decision of the government of Donald Trump to end an old moratorium of 17 years.
Posted on 17 July 2020 at 17 h 41
France Media Agency
Dustin Honken, 52 years, was pronounced dead at 16 h 36 of a lethal injection of pentobarbital, a powerful anesthetic, in the federal prison of Terre Haute, in Indiana (north), according to the Department of Justice.
“He admitted to the crimes he committed and spent his detention atoning for them,” said his lawyer Shawn Nolan in a statement, saying there was “no reason” for him. government wanting to execute it.
In closing words he recited “Heaven-Haven” by English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, the lawyer said.
Dustin Honken had been sentenced to death in 2005 for having killed five people, two men who were to testify against him, as well as a woman and his two little ones daughters of 6 and 10 years in 1993 in Iowa (northeast).
A drug trafficker since his adolescence, he was at the time at the head of a vast network of production and sale of methamphetamines.
“Almost 30 years after Honken took the lives of five people in cold blood, including two little girls, to protect himself and his criminal business, he finally faced justice, “said a spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice.
Most crimes committed in the United States are tried at the state level, some of which apply the death penalty, but federal justice can deal with the most serious acts.
Donald Trump, a supporter of the death penalty like a majority of Republican voters, decided last year to resume federal executions, which have since been interrupted 2003 .
Murder of children
The schedule for the first executions was unveiled in June. They concerned four white men sentenced to death for the murder of children.
Daniel Lee was executed on Tuesday and Wesley Purkey on Thursday, after court marathons that took their lawyers to the Supreme Court. They claimed, in particular, that the health of the many witnesses to the execution was threatened because of the coronavirus epidemic.
The court dismissed all motions and Dustin Honken's chances of having his execution postponed were slim. However, he had received the support of a thousand religious dignitaries who unsuccessfully called on the president for leniency.
“Dustin worked every day on his Catholic faith which was the center of his life”, explained Shawn Nolan. “The man they killed today was a human being who could have spent the rest of his life helping others and making amends” from his crimes, he said.
A fourth death row inmate, Keith Nelson, is to be executed on 27 August for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a little girl 10 years old.
Before this week, only three people had been executed at the federal level since the reinstatement of this sentence in 1988, including Timothy McVeigh, responsible of the Oklahoma City bombing (168 dead in 1995 ) in 2001.
