(07-27-2019 10:27 AM)tanqtonic Wrote: (07-26-2019 07:47 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote: In terms of the executions, I wish they wouldn't reinstate it but in the administration's defense, the five people they mentioned are truly reprehensible individuals.
My point of contention though is why so many right away? I think the government has executed something like 37 individuals since 1927 or thereabouts. I don't have the year-by-year totals (no one has been executed since 2003, I know that). But I would imagine 5 in less than a year is way higher than the normal rate.
I also wonder why these particular inmates are in federal penitentiaries when it seems like some of them did not commit murders either of a terroristic variety, or on federal lands. Shouldn't they be under the jurisdiction of the state where they committed the crime?
Daniel Lee -- Federal gun charges and racketeering; double murder of a gun dealer and wife, murder while committing Federal offense
Lezmond Mitchell -- murder on Indian reservation
Wesley Ira Purkey -- murder after kidnapping; drove from Kansas City, KS to Kansas City MO with the victim; Federal kidnapping charges and murder in commission of a Federal crime
Alfred Bourgeois -- killed daughter on Naval Air Station land.
Dustin Lee Honken -- murder during a drug operation; Federal charge of drug conspiracy got the charge upped to the Federal level bc of Federal law violation.
Not that hard to look up.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-g...cade-lapse
When intrigued, Google is your friend. I actually was confused by some others on death row (i.e. a Kingsville carjacking and double murder), but when you look at the backgrounds a little closer there is typically a good rationale for the Federal beef.
Interestingly, there was a very high profile federal death penalty case that just concluded here in Illinois. A grad student from China at the Univ. of Ill. in Champaign was abducted. Surveillance video showed her getting into a black Saturn. She was never seen again. The Saturn was traced to another U of I grad student. He was charged in federal court with kidnapping, rape, and murder, ultimately confessed (in opening statements on the first day of trial after two years of maintaining innocence!), and got life in prison (without parole) when the jury could not unanimously agree on death.
One takeaway here is that, at least in blue states and/or in states where the death penalty has been gone for long enough for people to get used to the idea even if they weren't/aren't "anti" death penalty, the feds may not be getting many death penalties either. This guy's crimes were every bit as heinous as the ones we've been talking about, he showed no remorse (has never even revealed the location of the body to allow the family to recover the remains -- and in fact tried to use that information as a bargaining chip to get the death penalty dropped), and they still could not get a death verdict -- in Central Illinois no less (still a pretty conservative area).
But wait. What was the federal "hook" to this case, you might ask. There was never any proof that the victim was lured or taken across state lines. Every criminal act took place entirely within Illinois. There was no racketeering or any other esoteric federal statute involved. The answer, which has never set right with me, is that in using his car to abduct the victim, the perpetrator used an object that had "moved in interstate commerce." The Saturn, you see, had been manufactured outside of Illinois.
If something as attenuated as that can form the basis for federal jurisdiction, it is difficult to see any limit whatsoever. Yet he did lose a motion to dismiss. It will be interesting to see if it holds up on appeal. If it does not, he will end up being prosecuted in state court after all, because double jeopardy does not apply between federal and state prosecutions (somehow I missed that in Crim. Proc. 25+ years ago and just learned it this month). Illinois does still allow sentences of life without parole, although there is a nascent movement to abolish that as well.
