Federal execution goes ahead in US
NEW York: The United States Government carried out its first execution in 17 years yesterday, putting to death convicted murderer Daniel Lee (47) over objections by his victims’ relatives after the Supreme Court cleared the way with an overnight ruling.
His death at the federal execution chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, marked the culmination of a threeyear effort by Republican President Donald Trump’s administration to resume capital punishment, ending a de facto moratorium by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, amid legal challenges and difficulties obtaining lethalinjection drugs.
‘‘The American people have made the considered choice to permit capital punishment for the most egregious federal crimes, and justice was done today in implementing the sentence for Lee’s horrific offences,’’ US Attorneygeneral William Barr said in a statement.
Lee’s lawyers complained that the Government had acted in haste and that they received no notification of his rescheduled execution after a remaining legal obstacle that had not been addressed by the Supreme Court was cleared shortly after dawn.
Just 10 minutes passed between the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals revoking the last outstanding injunction stopping
Lee’s execution, in an order at 7.36am (Indiana time), and the curtain in the execution chamber being pulled back at 7.46am to reveal Lee strapped to a gurney.
The execution had previously been scheduled for Monday at 4pm but was again delayed, with hours to spare, when a District Court in Washington ordered the Justice Department to delay Lee’s and three other executions scheduled for July and August to allow the continuation of legal challenges by death row inmates.
In issuing her injunction, Judge Tanya Chutkan had said Lee and other condemned men were likely to succeed in their argument that the new lethalinjection protocol announced last year that uses a single drug, the barbiturate pentobarbital, would cause an unconstitutional degree of pain and suffering.
Her order was affirmed overnight by an appellate court.
But at 2.10am the Supreme Court ruled that challenges by Lee and other condemned men to the execution protocol did not justify ‘‘lastminute’’ intervention by federal courts.
Ruth Friedman, one of the public defenders who had represented Lee, rebuked the Justice Department for what she described as a rushed process, saying lawyers did not learn his execution was under way until after his death. — Reuters