The majority of the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday approved the execution of 68-year-old Wesley Ira Purky, who has been convicted of, among other things, rape and murder.
The court dismissed from five to four chief judges objections from lawyers of the convict, as well as court orders to postpone the execution.
Purkey, who was sentenced to death by a federal court in 1998, is said to be demented and should therefore not be executed. The man has no idea why he would be put to death.
He then raped, murdered, and chopped up the body and dumped a chemical into a 16-year-old girl in Kansas.
He has also been convicted of murdering an 80-year-old woman, US media reported. The execution was scheduled for Wednesday evening, but it is unclear when it will take place now.
The federal government ordered the first death sentence to be carried out in seventeen years on Tuesday. Murderer Daniel Lewis Lee was executed.
That was also after a Supreme Court ruling, which dashed a lower court’s decision to postpone this and three other executions with a lethal injection.