Jessica Schneider at CNN:
Wesley Purkey was executed Thursday morning after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the second federal execution since 2003.
Purkey, 68, was originally scheduled to be executed on Wednesday evening, but a flurry of last minute legal filings delayed his death.
Early Thursday morning, the Supreme Court cleared the way for his execution, lifting injunctions from a federal judge in Washington, DC, who halted his execution and ordered further evaluation of claims about Purkey's mental competency.
Purkey was sentenced to death in January 2004 after he was convicted in federal court for the interstate kidnapping and killing of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in 1998.
...
Long's father and stepmother spoke after the execution and lamented the lengthy appeals process and uncertainty surrounding the execution itself.
"It just took way too long," Olivia Long said. "All these appeals, some of them he put through several times. And then we sat in a van for four hours this morning while he did a bunch more appeals. ... We just shouldn't have to wait this long."
William Long added, "It brings up everything all over again. You just sit there and relive it." He continued: "Every day for the rest of my life I will think of it, I will remember it and it is not something any parent should have to live through."
Purkey is the second federal inmate executed this week. The Justice Department restarted executions for the first time since 2003, and Daniel Lewis Lee was executed Tuesday morning in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Lee was a white supremacist who tortured and murdered gun dealer William Mueller, 52, his wife Nancy Ann Mueller, 28, as well as stepdaughter Sarah Elizabeth Powell in 1996.
