USA | Judge postpones execution of inmate who was set to be first federal prisoner put to death in 17 years

A federal judge postponed the execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, a convicted killer who had been set to be the first federal inmate executed in over 17 years.

In a Friday filing — just three days ahead of Lee’s Monday execution date — Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson, of the Southern District of Indiana, sided with the family of Lee’s victims, who had pleaded for a delay given the coronavirus pandemic.

Lee’s death was expected to usher in a new era for the death penalty in the United States, and three other men convicted for murdering children were slated to be killed in the coming weeks. The court’s order is a blow for the Trump administration, which announced last July that it would reinstate the federal death penalty after a nearly two-decade lapse. Attorney General William Barr first announced the death penalty was being revived last year — President Donald Trump had taken on the issue and called to “bring back the death penalty” — and set execution dates for Lee and four other men.

Lee, a one-time white supremacist who killed a family of three, had originally been scheduled for execution in December, but his case was delayed after the courts blocked the death sentence from being carried out.

Earlene Peterson — whose daughter, granddaughter and son-in-law were tortured, killed and dumped in a lake by Lee and an accomplice — has opposed Lee’s execution, telling CNN last year that she did not want it done in her name.

Peterson, 81, and other family members had filed suit on Tuesday, asking the Indianapolis court to delay the execution because they are medically vulnerable to the virus and arguing that traveling to Indiana to witness the execution would place them “at grave risk of life-threatening complications from COVID-19.”

In a statement Friday after the ruling, an attorney for Peterson and the other family members said they “are grateful to the court for this ruling, which will enable them to exercise their right to attend the execution in the future while protecting themselves against the ravages of COVID-19.”

“The family is hopeful that the federal government will support them by not appealing today’s ruling, a reversal of which would put them back in the untenable position of choosing between attending the execution at great risk to their health and safety, or forgoing this event they have long wanted to be present for,” the attorney, Baker Kurrus, said. “We hope the government finally acts in a way to ease, rather than increase, the burdens of Mrs. Peterson and her family who have already been through an unspeakable tragedy.”

Lee’s scheduled execution was long anticipated to the be the moment that the federal government once again began fulfilling the fate of inmates sentenced to die after a series of court decisions in the last several months.

In December, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court blocking the death sentence from being carried out last year. But an appeals court decided in April that the executions could move forward, and Barr set new dates for Lee and three other men in June. Since then, lawyers for the men have made several last-ditch efforts to delay the executions, including the lawsuit that was filed this week by the family of Lee’s victims.

The three other federal inmates ordered to be executed in the days and weeks that follow are Wesley Ira Purkey for raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl; Dustin Lee Honken, for shooting and killing five people, including two young girls; and Keith Dwayne Nelson for kidnapping, raping and strangling to death a 10-year-old girl.

Only three federal inmates have been executed in the United States since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988 after a 16-year moratorium. Louis Jones, a Gulf War veteran, was the last federal inmate executed in March 2003 for the kidnapping and murder of 19-year-old Army Pvt. Tracie McBride.

Source: keyt.com, Staff, July 11, 2020

Trump administration plans to appeal judge's halting of first federal execution in 17 years

The Justice Department plans to appeal a judge’s ruling that halted the first federal execution in nearly two decades after family members of the victims raised concerns they would be at high risk of coronavirus if they had to travel to attend it.

The Justice Department filed its notice to appeal to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday.

A federal judge in Indiana on Friday halted the first federal execution planned in 17 years because the victims' family wanted to attend but was worried about contracting coronavirus.

Daniel Lee, a 47-year-old white supremacist who was sentenced to death after he was convicted of killing a family of three, had been scheduled to die by lethal injection on Monday. 

Lee, of Yukon, Oklahoma, was convicted in Arkansas of the 1996 killings of gun dealer William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell.

Prosecutors also filed court papers asking the judge who implemented the injunction to stay that order pending appeal. 

US Chief District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson ruled that the execution would be put on hold because the family of the victims wanted to attend but were afraid of traveling during the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 130,000 people and is ravaging prisons nationwide.

Attorney General William Barr has said part of the reason to resume executions was to carry out the sentences imposed by the court and to deliver a sense of justice to the victim's families, but relatives of those killed by Lee did not want that.

They have pleaded for years that Lee instead should receive the same life sentence as the ringleader in the deadly scheme. 

The relatives, including Earlene Branch Peterson, who lost her daughter and granddaughter in the killing, had urged the Trump administration for months not to move forward with the death sentence and had argued their grief is compounded by the push to execute Lee in the middle of a pandemic.

'The harm to Ms. Peterson, for example, is being forced to choose whether being present for the execution of a man responsible for the death of her daughter and granddaughter is worth defying her doctor's orders and risking her own life,' the judge wrote.

The injunction delays the execution until there is no longer such an emergency. 

The court order applies only to Lee's execution and does not halt two other executions that are scheduled for later next week and a third set to take place in August.

The resumption of federal executions comes as the federal prison has struggled to combat the coronavirus pandemic behind bars, including at least one death at USP Terre Haute, where they will take place. 

One inmate there has died from COVID-19.

The inmates who will be executed are Lee; Wesley Ira Purkey, of Kansas, who raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl and killed an 80-year-old woman; Dustin Lee Honken, who killed five people in Iowa, including two children; and Keith Dwayne Nelson, who kidnapped a 10-year-old girl who was rollerblading in front of her Kansas home and raped her in a forest behind a church before strangling the young girl to death with a wire.

Three of the executions — for Lee, Purkey and Honken — are scheduled days apart beginning July 13. 

Nelson’s execution is scheduled for August 28. The Justice Department said additional executions will be set at a later date.

The decision to proceed with the executions had been criticized as a dangerous and political move. 

Critics argue the government is instead creating an unnecessary and manufactured urgency around a topic that isn't high on the list of American concerns right now.

Chevie Kehoe, whom prosecutors described as the ringleader, recruited Lee in 1995 for his white supremacist organization. 

Two years later, they were arrested for the killings of the Muellers and Sarah in Tilly, Arkansas, about 75 miles northwest of Little Rock. 

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

Lee's attorneys also cite evidence from his trial that Kehoe actually killed Sarah.

The executions appeared set to happen following a Supreme Court decision refusing to block them and a lower court affirming the ruling. 

It's not clear what will happen with the other scheduled executions, which are scheduled next week for Wednesday and Friday.

Wesley Ira Purkey, of Kansas, who raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl and killed an 80-year-old woman, is scheduled to die on Wednesday. 

Dustin Lee Honken, who killed five people in Iowa, including two children, is scheduled to be executed Friday.

Keith Dwayne Nelson, scheduled to be executed in August, was convicted of kidnapping a 10-year-old girl while she was rollerblading in front of her Kansas home, raping her in a forest behind a church and then strangling her.

Source: dailymail.co.uk, A. Zilber, The Associated Press, July 11, 2020

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde