Iowa meth kingpin is 3rd executed by US government this week
Source: Associated Press
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) The U.S. government on Friday put to death an Iowa chemistry student-turned-meth kingpin convicted of killing five people, the third execution by the federal government in a week.
Dustin Honken, who prosecutors said killed key witnesses to stop them from testifying in his drugs case, received a lethal injection at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. Two others were also put to death during the week after a hiatus of nearly 20 years, including Kansan Wesley Purkey. His lawyers contended he had dementia and didnt know why he was being executed.
The first in the spate federal executions happened Tuesday, when Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death for killing a family in the 1990s as part of a plot to build a whites-only nation. Lees execution, like Purkeys, went ahead only after the U.S. Supreme Court gave it a green light in a 5-4 decision hours before.
Honken, of Britt, Iowa, had been on death row since 2005 and was the first Iowan with a death sentence imposed by Iowa jurors to be executed since 1963. Iowa struck the death penalty from state statutes in 1965, but Honken was eligible for the death penalty under U.S. law because he was tried in federal court.
-snip-
By MICHAEL TARM
16 minutes ago
Read more: https://apnews.com/824b3ba56e1be497e98100b9e7b91420
FILE - In this Aug. 18, 2004 file photo, Dustin Honken is led by federal marshals to a waiting car after the second day of jury selection in federal court in Sioux City, Iowa. A federal judge has denied the Iowa drug kingpin's requests to delay his execution, which is scheduled for Friday, July 17, 2020. U.S. District Judge Leonard Strand wrote Tuesday, July 14 that he would not intervene to delay Honken's execution date due to the coronavirus pandemic. He said the Bureau of Prisons was in the best position to weigh the health risks against the benefits of carrying out the execution. (Tim Hynds/Sioux City Journal via AP, File)
Thomas Hurt
(13,903 posts)a little authoritarian crackdown, increase the executions...what next?
Initech
(100,139 posts)LeftofObama
(4,243 posts)The article reads like something out of Breaking Bad.
louis-t
(23,310 posts)They feel it is their lot in life to punish people. It's a sickness.
Progressive Jones
(6,011 posts)VladmireTrumpkins
(370 posts)While out on bond in his drugs case in July 1993, Honken and his girlfriend Angela Johnson kidnapped Lori Duncan and her two daughters from their Mason City, Iowa, home, then killed and buried them in a wooded area nearby. Ten-year-old Kandi and 6-year-old Amber were still in their swimsuits on the hot summer day when they were shot execution-style in the back of the head.
Their primary target that day was Lori Duncans then-boyfriend, Greg Nicholson, who also lived at the home and was also killed. He and Lori Duncan were bound and gagged and shot multiple times.
As the investigation into Honken continued, he killed another drug dealer working with him, Terry DeGeus, beating him with a bat and shooting him.
NO SYMPATHY FROM ME!
https://apnews.com/824b3ba56e1be497e98100b9e7b91420
idziak4ever1234
(1,257 posts)a more severe punishment?
OneCrazyDiamond
(2,032 posts)Beyond that impossibility (sorry to all who believe in reincarnation), I think it would still be subjective. It's a freaky world.
Mr. Ected
(9,675 posts)The only punishment that truly fits the crime is to be completely, 100% separated from all of society, imprisoned in solitary without human interaction (except for remote access to legal assistance), as he has demonstrated that human life is of no value to him whatsoever, AND society deserves to be protected from him and his soulless recklessness.
Really wish I could rec this a thousand times, instead, I'll give your post this.