A Kansas man who raped and killed a 16-year-old girl and fatally beat an 80-year-old woman is scheduled to be among the first three inmates executed as the federal government resumes the practice after 17 years.
Sixty-eight-year-old Wesley Ira Purkey is set to die by lethal injection on Wednesday at an Indiana prison.
Defense attorneys argued Purkey isn't mentally competent to be executed and that executions are unsafe during a pandemic.
Purkey was sentenced to death for stabbing and dismembering teenager Jennifer Long in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1998.
He pleaded guilty in the killing nine months later of Mary Ruth Bales, of Kansas City, Kansas.
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