Execution nixed
Fed judge blocks killing of triple murderer
The U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled Monday morning that the Trump administration cannot move ahead with federal executions by lethal injection.
The ruling blocked the scheduled execution of triple murderer Daniel Lewis Lee that was set for Monday afternoon in Indiana and would have been the first in 17 years.
An appeals court had overturned a lower court’s stay of execution Sunday after Lee’s victims’ families requested a delay due to coronavirus, arguing that they would be putting themselves at risk if they traveled to see the death of the man who was convicted of robbing and killing gun dealer William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her 8year-old daughter, Sarah Powell, in Arkansas in 1996.
“The federal government has put this family in the untenable position of choosing between their right to witness Danny Lee’s execution and their own health and safety,” the family’s attorney, Baker Kurrus, said Sunday.
District Judge Tanya Chutkan said in the ruling that there are still legal issues to resolve and that “the public is not served by short-circuiting legitimate judicial process.”
In June, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case that challenged the executions based on the method. Attorneys for four men on Death Row argued that the federal government’s use of a single drug, rather than the three-drug cocktail, violates a mandate that federal executions be carried out “in the manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence is imposed.”
The Trump administration has been publicly pushing for federal executions to move forward.
“The American people, acting through Congress and Presidents of both political parties, have long instructed that defendants convicted of the most heinous crimes should be subject to a sentence of death,” Attorney General William Barr said in June.
“We owe it to the victims of these horrific crimes, and to the families left behind, to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
The Justice Department has already appealed the district court’s order.
Lee, a 47-year-old white supremacist, and his accomplice, Chevie Kehoe, robbed and killed their victims at the family’s home in Arkansas, then dumped their bodies in a nearby swamp. Lee was given the death penalty while Kehoe was sentenced to life in prison.
Nancy Mueller’s mother has pleaded for Lee’s death penalty to be overturned, including participating in a sixminute video released last year in which she said the federal government was ignoring her wishes.
“I can’t see how executing Daniel Lee will honor my daughter in any way,” she said. “In fact, it’s kind of like it dirties her name. Because she wouldn’t want it, and I don’t want it.”