In its second execution this week following a 17-year pause, the U.S. government on Thursday executed Wesley Purkey, a Kansas man who admitted to killing a Kansas City teenager in 1998.
Purkey, 68, was put to death at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. His attorneys had argued he was mentally unfit for execution because he suffered from dementia.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied his application to stay the execution hours before he was put to death.
The Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution ruling in a 5-4 decision. The four liberal justices dissented.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that "proceeding with Purkey's execution now, despite the grave questions and factual findings regarding his mental competency, casts a shroud of constitutional doubt over the most irrevocable of injuries." She was joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.
In 2003, Purkey was convicted in the kidnapping and killing of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in Kansas City. Purkey had dismembered her, burned the body and dumped it in a septic pond.
He was also convicted in Wyandotte County of murdering Mary Ruth Bales, 80, of Kansas City, Kansas. She was killed with a hammer.
Purkey expressed remorse in his final statement.
"I deeply regret the pain and suffering I caused to Jennifer's family," he said. "I am deeply sorry. I deeply regret the pain I caused to my daughter, who I love so very much. This sanitized murder really does not serve no purpose whatsoever."
His time of death was 8:19 a.m. EDT.
On Wednesday, a federal judge had issued a preliminary injunction that challenged Purkey's mental competency to be executed, as he suffers from advanced Alzheimer's disease, dementia, schizophrenia and brain damage. Purkey, his attorneys have said, did not understand why the government wanted to put him to death.
In a statement Wednesday evening, Purkey's attorney said they recently learned the government appeared to have had "scientific confirmation in their possession of significant structural abnormalities" in Purkey's brain that were "consistent with cognitive impairment such as vascular dementia or other conditions."
In a post on Twitter, Sister Helen Prejean, a death penalty opponent, said each government attorney involved in "this egregious prosecutorial misconduct should be sanctioned."
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department set the execution dates for Purkey and three other federal death row inmates, the first to be carried out by the federal government in nearly 20 years.
