Protesters express opposition to the death penalty during a protest in Indiana. (AFP)
Washington:
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court authorized the first federal executions, quashing a lower court decision delaying them.
Four federal executions were planned, but a judge of the district court had suspended them to allow the judicial challenge of the lethal injection which was to be used.
The district court decision came hours before the first execution of former white supremacist Daniel Lewis Lee, who was convicted with another man for the murder of a family of three in an alleged robbery the financing of the foundation of an “Aryan People’s Republic”.
The prisoners “failed to demonstrate to justify a last-minute intervention by a federal court,” the Supreme Court said in a judgment released early Tuesday.
“We are canceling the preliminary injunction of the district court so that the … executions can proceed as planned.”
By suspending the executions, district judge Tanya Chutkan had ruled that the use of a single drug, pentobarbital, to carry out the executions could cause “extreme pain and unnecessary suffering” and could violate a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
A court of appeal confirmed the order before the Supreme Court overturned it.
Lee is said to be the first federal detainee to be executed in the United States since 2003 and the first since President Donald Trump announced plans to resume federal executions.
There have only been three federal executions since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1988.
Lee and another man, Chevie Kehoe, were convicted in Arkansas in 1999 for the 1996 murder of arms dealer William Mueller, his wife and eight-year-old daughter.
Prosecutors say the two men robbed Mueller to steal guns they planned to sell to finance the founding of a white supremacy “Aryan People’s Republic” in the Pacific Northwest.
Lee, who has since renounced his white supremacist beliefs according to his lawyers, was sentenced to death while Kehoe was sentenced to three life terms with no possibility of parole.
“Untenable position”
Earlene Peterson, 81, whose daughter and granddaughter were killed, campaigned against Lee’s death sentence, saying she wanted him to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“It’s an easy outing,” Peterson told the New York Times. “He should have to go through this. Like me.”
Peterson and relatives of other victims also filed a lawsuit to delay the execution, arguing that it was dangerous for them to travel to Terre Haute to witness the execution of Lee due to the coronavirus pandemic.
A court of appeal dismissed the complaint on Sunday, but Baker Kurrus, a family lawyer, said he would take the case to the Supreme Court.
“The federal government has placed this family in an untenable position of choosing between their right to assist in the execution of Danny Lee and their own health and safety,” said Kurrus.
The Supreme Court, however, rejected their request.
The Prisons Office said on Sunday that a member of the Terre Haute prison staff had tested positive for COVID-19.
“There is no reason for anyone to execute people right now because of the pandemic,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
More than 1,000 American religious leaders urged Trump last week to abandon plans to resume federal executions and Dunham accused the president of “political use of the death penalty”.
Trump, who faces a tough re-election battle in November, has called for an increased use of the death penalty, especially for police murderers and drug traffickers.
Only a handful of American states, mainly in the conservative South, are still actively carrying out executions. In 2019, 22 people were killed.
Most crimes are tried under state law, but federal courts deal with some of the most serious crimes, including terrorist attacks and hate crimes.
