U.S. executes first federal prisoner in 17 years
The Department of Justice on Tuesday carried out the first U.S. federal execution in 17 years.
Daniel Lewis Lee died by lethal injection at a federal prison in Indiana shortly after eight o'clock in the morning.
The punishment was carried out hours after a 2 a.m. decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that it could proceed.
Earlier on Monday a federal judge issued an injunction after an appeal by Lee's attorneys over the method of execution.
At issue is the federal execution protocol: a single drug, pentobarbital sodium, which death penalty opponents say can cause convicts to suffer flash pulmonary edema, a sensation of drowning, terror and panic.
An unsigned decision by the high court's five conservative justices said that five states have already adopted the pentobarbital sodium protocol, which has been used in over 100 execution without incident, and that expert testimony was conflicted over whether the pulmonary edema described took place before or after death.
The four liberal justices voiced their dissent, arguing the court should consider whether capital punishment violated the U.S. constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and claiming the court's rush to lift the injunction denied the prisoners a full review.
The Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr has pressed to resume federal executions.
In a statement last month Barr said, "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 defendant, Daniel Lewis Lee, was convicted in 1999 of murdering a father, mother, and daughter. His codefendant, convicted of the same crimes, was sentenced to life in prison.
In something of twist, family members of the victims challenged Lee's sentence as unfair, and recently claimed that the coronavirus made it unsafe for them to attend his execution.
The Justice Department, which had which claimed to represent families' wishes to see justice, dismissed their objections as "frivolous," and argued it was not required to consider their availability to travel.
