Judge in Indiana halts 1st federal execution in 17 years, citing virus
WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 for coronavirus if they had to travel to attend it.
Daniel Lee, 47,
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.
But Chief District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson ruled Friday
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.
About an hour after the judge’s
ruling, the Justice Department filed its notice to appeal to the 7th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and filed court papers asking the judge to
stay the order pending appeal.
The Justice Department argues that
it is likely to win an appeal. It contends that executions require
extensive planning and coordination with other law enforcement officials
and says dozens of staff members were already being brought in from
other facilities ahead of Monday’s planned execution.
“These preparations cannot easily be undone,” the filing says.
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 victims’ families, though 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 not to move forward with the death sentence and had
argued that 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.
The
decision to proceed with the executions had been criticized as a
dangerous and political move. Critics argue that the government is
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 (120 kilometers) 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 nation of only white people.
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 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.
DeMillo reported from Little Rock, Ark.