Government carries out first execution in 17 years

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — The federal government Tuesday carried out its first execution in almost two decades, killing by lethal injection a man convicted of murdering an Arkansas family in a 1990s plot to build a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest.

The execution of Daniel Lewis Lee came over the objection of the victims’ relatives and following days of legal delays. It was the first by the Bureau of Prisons since 2003.

Just before he died at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, Lee, professed his innocence. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not a murderer,” said Lee, 47, of Yukon, Oklahoma. “You’re killing an innocent man.”

The government is scheduled to execute two more men this week, including Wesley Ira Purkey on Wednesday for the killing of a Kansas City teenager in 1998. Legal experts say Purkey, 68, who has dementia, has a greater chance of avoiding that fate because of his mental state.

Attorney General William Barr said, “Lee finally faced the justice he deserved. 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 offenses.”

Barr had said earlier that the Justice Department had a duty to carry out the sentences, partly to provide closure to the victims’ families.

A U.S. District Court judge on Monday put a hold on Lee’s execution over concerns from death row inmates on how executions were to be carried out, and an appeals court upheld it, but the Supreme Court overturned it.