US carries out first federal execution in 17 years
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – The federal government carried out its first execution in 17 years early Tuesday when Daniel Lewis Lee, convicted in the 1996 slaying of an Arkansas family, was put to death by lethal injection at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute.
Lee was pronounced dead at 8:07 a.m., following a legal fight that delayed his execution by more than 16 hours.
“You’re killing an innocent man,” Lee said before he died.
Lee’s execution had been scheduled for 4 p.m. Monday, but a series of legal challenges delayed the sentence. A 5-4 Supreme Court decision early Tuesday cleared the way for Lee’s lethal injection and the scheduled executions of three other inmates. Two are scheduled to proceed this week and another in August.
Lee’s attorney, Ruth Friedman, denounced the government’s action as “reckless and relentless,” saying her client remained strapped to the gurney for hours as the legal challenges played out overnight.
“It is shameful that the government saw fit to carry out this execution during a pandemic,” Friedman said. “It is shameful that the government saw fit to carry out this execution when ... the judges in his case and even the family of his victims urged against it.”
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 said in a written statement.
Inside the Terre Haute execution chamber early Tuesday, the curtains were rolled back from four witness room windows at 7:46 a.m., to reveal Lee strapped to the gurney with his arms out to his sides and two IV lines running from a port in the wall behind him.
Asked if he wanted to make a final statement, Lee asserted his innocence and criticized the court system for ignoring DNA evidence.
“I bear no responsibility for the deaths of the Mueller family,” he said, referring to victims William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her 8-yearold daughter, Sarah. He claimed he and co-defendant Chevie Kehoe were in another part of the country at the time of the murders.
Lee and Kehoe targeted the Mueller family as part of a botched effort to fund a white supremacist enclave. After robbing and shooting the victims with a stun gun, the killers covered the victims’ heads with plastic bags, sealed the bags with duct tape, weighed down each victim with rocks, and threw the family of three into the Illinois Bayou in Arkansas.
Until the Supreme Court acted early Tuesday, the appeals court had denied the government’s request to lift the stay ordered by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who concluded that four inmates, including Lee, had not exhausted their challenges to the government’s execution protocol.