quote:

Originally posted by FenderBender:
That's a shame.

quote:

Originally posted by RaiseHal:

quote:

Originally posted by FenderBender:
That's a shame.

Why?

quote:

Originally posted by Sigmund:
I'm fine with Barr's decision. One of the five is from Iowa, though I was unfamiliar with the case.


https://www.desmoinesregister....ecutions/1825891001/

Infamous Iowa murderer Dustin Honken to be executed in 2020, U.S. says

Associated Press Published 10:10 a.m. CT July 25, 2019 | Updated 10:42 a.m. CT July 25, 2019

ASHINGTON — An Iowan convicted in one of the state's most heinous mass murders will be put to death in January, the Justice Department said Thursday.

The government is resuming executions for the first time since 2003.

Dustin Lee Honken, 51, was running a sophisticated methamphetamine operation when, in 1993, he committed the execution-style slayings of two associates, one of their girlfriends and her daughters, ages 10 and 6. A jury convicted him in all five slayings, giving him two death sentences for the girls' murders and life in prison for the adults' deaths.

He has exhausted his legal appeals for the guilty verdict, the government said.

In 2013, upholding the death sentences, U.S. District Judge Linda Reade wrote that Honken received a fair trial in 2004 and effective legal counsel at every step of the process. She said she saw no reason "to disturb the jury's determination that death is the appropriate punishment in this case."



Honken is on death row at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Iowa does not have the death penalty, but Honken was eligible because he was convicted in federal court.

Prosecutors say Honken was a likable chemistry whiz who turned into an evil mastermind, building elaborate meth labs in Arizona and then in Iowa in the early 1990s.

They say that he and Angela Johnson, who was his girlfriend at the time, killed two dealers who had distributed their meth after they became witnesses in a federal investigation that led to Honken's indictment on drug charges.

Days before Honken was expected to plead guilty, Honken and Johnson forced one of the men to make a videotaped statement exonerating Honken, then took him, his girlfriend and the girls to a field and shot each in the back of the head. Months later, Johnson lured a second dealer, who was her former boyfriend, to a secluded location where Honken shot him several times and beat him with a baseball bat.

The victims' bodies were not found until 2000, when Johnson drew a map for a jailhouse informant that led authorities to their shallow graves near Mason City.

On Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department said that five inmates will be executed, starting in December.

In 2014, President Barack Obama directed the department to conduct a review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs. That review resulted in what effectively was a freeze on executions.

The department says the Bureau of Prisons has completed the review and the executions can continue.

Honken’s execution is scheduled to occur at Terre Haute on Jan. 15, 2020.

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
An argument could be made that years and years on death row is more cruel than getting it over with.