U.S. executes murderer of Arkansas family

Daniel Lewis "Danny" Lee is shown in the Pope County Detention Center in Russellville in this Oct. 31, 1997, file photo.
Daniel Lewis "Danny" Lee is shown in the Pope County Detention Center in Russellville in this Oct. 31, 1997, file photo.

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — A man convicted 21 years ago of killing a rural Arkansas family and dumping their bodies in a bayou was executed Tuesday morning at a federal prison in Indiana.

Danny Lee, 47, was the first federal inmate in 17 years to be executed by the U.S. government.

The lethal drug was administered to Lee shortly after 7:45 a.m. EDT, and he was pronounced dead at 8:07 a.m.

With his body under a sheet and arms strapped tightly to the gurney, Lee picked his head up and looked at the gaggle of reporters on the other side of the glass to make his final statement.

"I made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I'm not a murderer," he said. "They're killing an innocent man."

Lee, 47, had been scheduled to die on Monday, but a federal judge in Washington D.C. granted an injunction hours before the scheduled execution. After a day of legal wrangling, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the stay early Tuesday morning.

As the drug was being administered, Lee was flanked by a federal marshal and a senior official with the Bureau of Prisons. He moved his head back and forth and uttered a few statements, which were inaudible from the witness room.

After several minutes, his breathing became more labored. He twitched his right foot and moved his head slightly to the left, where it stayed for the next 10 minutes.

A doctor from behind another glass window got on the microphone and pronounced him dead.

Lee, 47, was convicted and sentenced to death in the January 1996 slaying of a family of three outside Tilly. He and his accomplice, Chevie Kehoe, dumped the bodies in a bayou near Russellville.

The victims were William Mueller, 52; his wife Nancy, 28; and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell.

The reporters were assigned to a viewing area separate from the other witnesses, who could not be seen. The Associated Press reported that a couple of Lee’s attorneys, a few of his family members and a spiritual advisor were present for his execution.

The victims’ family members who attended declined to speak to reporters. There was no news conference afterward.

Witnesses waited in the viewing area for more than three hours before the curtains were raised. The Bureau of Prisons told reporters that Lee’s attorneys raised a “technical legal issue” at the last minute.

It was the last of a series of legal maneuvers that led to injunctions, overturned injunctions and postponements.

After midnight Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to vacate the preliminary injunction that stopped Lee’s execution on Monday.

A federal judge in Washington D.C. ordered the delay that morning based on legal issues pertaining to the federal government’s lethal injection protocol, suggesting it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

Lee was executed with pentobarbital, a barbiturate that disables the brain and nervous system.

Various inmates filed a motion last week alleging that the government’s use of pentobarbital would cause sensations commonly associated with drowning or strangulation. In her ruling on the motion Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan sided with the inmates, stating the drug “poses an unconstitutionally significant risk of serious pain.”

Late Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit refused to overturn Chutkan’s order, so the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to lift the injunction.

Several hours later, the court voted 5-4 to vacate the Chutkan’s injunction.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Elena Kagan dissented.

In his dissenting opinion, Breyer stated, “As I have previously written, the solution may be for this Court to directly examine the question whether the death penalty violates the Constitution.”

The high court’s decision also puts back onto the schedule three more executions lined up by the federal government, with two of them coming later this week. Like Lee, the other three death row inmates were convicted in murders involving children.

A few of Nancy Mueller’s family victims had sought a delay in the execution because they didn’t want to collectively travel thousands of miles in the midst of a deadly pandemic to watch Lee be put to death. Their filing led to an Indiana judge granting a stay Friday, but an appeals court overturned that Sunday.

The final delay occurred after the media assembled inside the viewing room around 4:15 a.m.

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