TERRE HAUTE, Ind. • A judge on Wednesday halted the execution of a man, said to be suffering from dementia, who was set to die by lethal injection in the federal government’s second execution this week after a 17-year hiatus.

Wesley Ira Purkey, convicted of a gruesome 1998 kidnapping and killing, was scheduled for execution Wednesday night at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., where Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death Tuesday after his eleventh-hour legal bids failed.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., imposed two injunctions prohibiting the federal Bureau of Prisons from moving forward with Purkey’s execution. The Justice Department immediately appealed in both cases. A separate temporary stay was already in place from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

The legal wrangling suggested a volley of litigation would continue into the evening, similar to what happened before the government executed Lee following a ruling from the Supreme Court. One of the injunctions imposed Wednesday would halt not only Purkey’s execution, but another that has been scheduled for Friday and one in August.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ended the stay by the 7th Circuit, but the others remained in place. Purkey’s execution was originally scheduled for Wednesday afternoon but was put off until the evening as the legal issues played out.

Lee, convicted of killing an Arkansas family was the first of four condemned men scheduled to die in July. Purkey, 68, of Lansing, Kan., would be the second.

The entrance to the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., Wednesday, July 15, 2020. Wesley Ira Purkey, who raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl and killed an 80-year-old woman is scheduled to b e executed at 7:30 pm on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Michael Conroy