LITTLE ROCK -- Federal prosecutors say U.S. District Court in Little Rock does not have jurisdiction to consider the request for a new trial by an Oklahoma man sentenced to death for killing an Arkansas family in a plot to set up a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest.
Monday's filing in response to a motion by Danny Lee of Yukon, Oklahoma, says the federal court doesn't have jurisdiction because an appeals court has not certified it as either containing new evidence or based on new law.
Lee's motion says prosecutors illegally failed to tell defense attorneys that a witness who testified that Lee admitted to the murders also told investigators he believed Lee was lying.
Lee and Chevie Kehoe, 45, of Colville, Wash., were convicted of killing gun dealer William Mueller, his wife, Nancy Mueller, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell, of Russellville in 1996 and stealing guns and cash as part of the plot to set up a whites-only nation.
Kehoe, described by federal prosecutors at the time as the leader of the plot, was sentenced to life without parole days before Lee was sentenced.
Prosecutors, seeking the death penalty for both men, at the time described Kehoe as the ringleader and Lee as his henchman.
NW News on 11/28/2018