New execution dates set for federal inmates on death row, including Dustin Honken

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has set new dates to begin executing federal death-row inmates following a monthslong legal battle over the plan to resume the executions for the first time since 2003. That includes north-central Iowa drug kingpin Dustin Honken. 

Attorney General William Barr directed the federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions, beginning in mid-July, of four inmates convicted of killing children.

Three of the men had been scheduled to be put to death when Barr announced the federal government would resume executions last year. A federal district judge had halted the executions back in November, but the US District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed that ruling in April. 

Honken of  Britt was convicted of the July 1993 murders of 34-year-old Greg Nicholson, 31-year-old Lori Duncan, Duncan’s two children, 10-year-old Kandace and six-year-old Amber, at Duncan’s Mason City home. Honken was also convicted of murdering 32-year-old Terry DeGeus four months later. Their five bodies were found buried in a field southwest of Mason City in the fall of 2000.

Honken is now slated to be executed on July 17th. 

The move is likely to add a new front to the national conversation about criminal justice reform.

 

(The Associated Press contributed to this report)