Wesley Ira Purkey says he isn't 'the worst of the worst', asks Trump for clemency months before execution for rape and murders
One of the five federal death row inmates, recently scheduled for execution, has made a last-ditch attempt to save his life by petitioning President Donald Trump for clemency. Wesley Ira Purkey's attorneys are urging the POTUS to commute their client's death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
"He has not forgiven himself, and so he cannot ask for forgiveness from you or your office. He asks only for your intervention, which would simply permit him to die in prison, at this late stage of his life," Purkey's attorneys, in his clemency petition, wrote.
The 67-year-old inmate is set to be executed on December 13, for the 1998 rape, murder, and dismemberment of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in his home in Kansas. Purkey was also been convicted for beating an 80-year-old woman, Mary Bales, to death with a hammer.
Attorney General Bill Barr, last month, had announced that the federal government would continue executions under the Trump administration for the first time since 2003. Subsequently, five death row inmates were recently scheduled to be executed as Barr called them the "worst criminals." All five of them will be executed later this year in December and January next year.
However, Purkey's attorney, Rebecca Woodman, told MEA World Wide (MEAWW) "Mr. Purkey is not 'the worst of the worst.' He is a man who grew up in a house of horrors, beaten and humiliated by both of his parents and subjected to extensive and ongoing sexual abuse by members of his family."
The attorney also said that his client had been "demeaned and brutalized" by Catholic nuns, and "repeatedly molested" by a priest. "Had the jurors heard this information, at least one of them might have voted for a life sentence," Woodman said.
Purkey's legal team, on Tuesday, filed for a stay of execution, arguing that his trial attorney did not investigate his traumatic childhood. His current attorneys described his upbringing by abusive and alcoholic parents in court filings, claiming that Purkey's mother began sexually molesting him after his parents separated when he was eight.
The filings stated that Purkey's mother, by the age of nine or ten, taught him to perform oral sex on her, and eventually forced him to have sex with her. The convict' father, meanwhile, paid prostitutes to fondle and touch him when he was 12 and his grandmother would frequently parade naked around the house, and "cuddle" with him naked at night, according to the filings.
Purkey was also sexually molested by a parish priest on several occasions over a three-year period, from age eleven to thirteen. The court filing argues that his traumatic childhood led him to a path of alcohol, drug abuse, and crime.