WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is plowing ahead with its plan to resume federal executions next week, for the first time in more than 15 years. That’s despite the coronavirus pandemic raging both inside and outside prisons and despite stagnating national support for the death penalty. Three people are scheduled to die by lethal injection in one week at an Indiana prison, beginning Monday. One of those set to be executed, is Dustin Honken, who was originally from Britt (IA), who was convicted in 2004 of murdering a family in a rural area outside of Mason City in 1993. Authorities say Honken was a meth king pin at the time and the man he murdered was another drug dealer who had become an informant. Honken shot the man, his wife and two children in the head.

The decision to go ahead with the executions has been criticized as a dangerous and political move by the Trump administration, at a time when there is great scrutiny on racial disparities in the death penalty and on larger criminal justice system.