United States carries out first federal execution in 17 years

Convicted killer and former white supremacist Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death Tuesday morning, marking the first federal execution in 17 years and just hours after a divided U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow for his execution and that of three of others.

“I didn’t do it,” Lee said in his last moments. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not a murderer.”

His final words were: “You’re killing an innocent man.”

The 47-year-old Oklahoma native died by lethal injection at the Terre Haute prison in Indiana. He was pronounced dead at 8:07 a.m., hours after the Supreme Court vote was released in an unsigned order released after 2 a.m.

Their decision was the latest in a series of legal volleys set off by the case. Just prior to the Supreme Court ruling, the U.S. District Court on Monday temporarily blocked Lee’s death — scheduled for 4 p.m. in Indiana — until legal challenges to the government’s lethal injection standards are resolved, according to court papers.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that three death row inmates scheduled to die in July, and a fourth whose execution is slated for August, could pursue their claim against the federal government, alleging its plans to use a single drug-protocol could cause severe pain and needless suffering.

They claimed the new lethal injection procedure, which uses the barbiturate phenobarbital, interferes with breathing before the heart is stopped, resulting in the feeling of drowning and asphyxiation as well as extreme panic and fear.

“The plaintiffs in this case have not made the showing required to justify last-minute intervention by a Federal Court. Last-minute stays like that issued this morning should be the extreme exception, not the norm,” the decision reads.

“The Government has produced competing expert testimony of its own, indicating that any pulmonary edema occurs only after the prisoner has died or been rendered fully insensate.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, along with justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a dissenting opinion condemned the court’s “accelerated decision making.”

“The court forever deprives respondents of their ability to press a constitutional challenge to their lethal injections,” she said.

Justice Stephen Breyer echoed the sentiment in a dissent that was joined Ginsburg, writing that there were still “significant questions” about the constitutionality of the single-drug method the government intends to use.

The Supreme Court in June declined to hear a case that challenged the executions based on the lethal injection protocol that argued it was in violation of a mandate requiring all federal executions be carried out “in the manner prescribed by the law of the State in which the sentence is imposed.”

In 1996, Lee and four other members of a white supremacist organization went on a deadly crime spree that culminated in the murders of gun dealer William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell.

The victims’ bodies were discovered dumped in a swamp and all five defendants were arrested and convicted.

The decision to proceed with Lee’s execution comes amid the global coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed the lives of more than 135,000 Americans and sickened thousands within the prison system.

Inmate advocates and those calling for prison reform have warned the dense populations and subpar sanitation standards within detention facilities exacerbate the spread of the highly contagious virus.

An appeals court on Sunday overturned a lower court’s stay of execution after family of Lee’s victims requested a delay due to the ongoing health crisis. They argued traveling to see the execution would put their health at risk.

According to federal statistics, there are currently four confirmed coronavirus cases among inmates at the Terre Haute prison where the executions are scheduled to take place. One inmate there has died from the virus, officials said.

Attorney General William Barr however has previously said he believes the Bureau of Prisons could “carry out these executions without being at risk,” noting the agency has implemented a number of additional safety measures, including temperature checks and requiring witnesses to wear masks.

Last year, Barr announced the federal government would resume federal executions, bring an end to the informal moratorium after a botched state execution in Oklahoma. The 2014 incident prompted then-President Barack Obama to order a broad review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs.

Barr in July announced the review had been completed, paving the way for federal capital punishment to begin again.

Executions on the federal level have been rare and the government has put to death only three defendants since restoring the federal death penalty in 1988. The most recent was in 2003, when Louis Jones was executed for the 1995 kidnapping, rape and murder of a young female soldier.

With News Wire Services