'Lethal injection' US carries out first federal execution in 17 years

The US has carried out the first federal execution in 17 years following a 5-4 Supreme Court opinion issued late in the night after a contentious battle by the Trump administration to move forward with the execution.

Daniel Lewis Lee, a 47-year-old Oklahoma resident charged with killing a family in the 1990s, died in federal custody at a prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana by lethal injection on Tuesday morning.

It was the first of three federal executions scheduled this week, and faced strong condemnation from family members of Lee’s victims, with one relative saying in a statement: “For us it is a matter of being there and saying, `This is not being done in our name; we do not want this.”

Still, Attorney General William Barr has said the Justice Department has a duty to carry out the sentences imposed by the courts, including the death penalty, and to bring a sense of closure to the victims and those in the communities where the killings happened.

The decision to move forward with the execution — and two others scheduled later in the week — during a global health pandemic that has killed more than 135,000 people in the United States and is ravaging prisons nationwide, drew scrutiny from civil rights groups as well as family of Lee’s victims.

Critics argued that the government was creating an unnecessary and manufactured urgency for political gain.

“The government has been trying to plow forward with these executions despite many unanswered questions about the legality of its new execution protocol,” said Shawn Nolan, one of the attorneys for the men facing federal execution.

The developments are likely to add a new front to the national conversation about criminal justice reform in the lead-up to the 2020 elections.

Critics of the execution noted Lee’s co-defendant and the reputed ringleader, Chevie Kehoe, received a life sentence.

Kehoe, of Colville, Washington, recruited Lee in 1995 to join his white supremacist organisation, known as the Aryan Peoples’ Republic. Two years later, they were arrested for the killings of gun dealer William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell, in Tilly, Arkansas, about 75 miles (120 kilometres) northwest of Little Rock.

At their 1999 trial, prosecutors said Kehoe and Lee stole guns and $50,000 in cash from the Muellers as part of their plan to establish a whites-only nation.

Prosecutors said Lee and Kehoe incapacitated the Muellers and questioned Sarah about where they could find money and ammunition. Then, they used stun guns on the victims, sealed trash bags with duct tape on their heads to suffocate them, taped rocks to their bodies and dumped them in a nearby bayou.

A US District Court judge put a hold on Lee’s execution on Monday, over concerns from death row inmates on how executions were to be carried out, and an appeals court upheld it, but the high court overturned it. That delay came after an appeals court on Sunday overturned a hold that had been put in place last week after the victims’ relatives argued they would be put at high risk for the coronavirus if they had to travel to attend the execution.

Two other federal executions are scheduled for later this week, though one is on hold in a separate legal claim.