Many of our readers learned over the weekend that the Federal death penalty has been reimposed.
Five executions of murderers on the Federal death row will be performed in December, according to reports appearing in the New York Times.
These are the five the government wants to execute: The men, whose ages range from 37 to 67, have each been convicted of heinous crimes, and together have been involved in the slayings of 13 victims. The cases fell under federal jurisdiction because of how or where they were carried out.
Dustin Honken, who was convicted of killing five people outside a courthouse in Iowa in 2004. Lezmond Mitchell who killed a woman stabbing her to death and forced her granddaughter to sit next to grandmother’s body for a 40 mile ride. Wesley Purkin, who killed a 16 year old girl and an 80 year old woman. He repeatedly raped the 16 year old before killing her and then dismembering her body and then burned it. Daniel Lee, a white supremacist who murdered an Arkansas gun dealer, his wife and her 8 year old daughter by suffocating them before throwing them into an Illinois bayou. And Alfred Bourgeois who tortured, repeatedly beat and killed his young daughter.
The tendency in Massachusetts is to be against the death penalty. Those adamantly against it claim it does nothing to stop others from committing murders – and people who think this way may be correct to have such thoughts.
Others say the death penalty is barbaric, that the state taking a life is murder in itself. We believe these five murderers don’t deserve to be kept alive.
We are unsure of the death penalty but we are sure these five deserve to die.
Such are the complexities of putting to death murderers who should not be enjoying the light of day.