The US has carried out the first federal execution in 17 years following a 5-4 Supreme Court opinion issued late in the night after a contentious battle by the Trump administration to move forward with the execution.

 

 

Daniel Lewis Lee, a 47-year-old Oklahoma resident charged with killing a family in the 1990s, died in federal custody at a prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana by lethal injection on Tuesday morning.

It was the first of three federal executions scheduled this week, and faced strong condemnation from family members of Lee’s victims, with one relative saying in a statement: “For us, it is a matter of being there and saying, `This is not being done in our name; we do not want this.”

Still, Attorney General William Barr has said the Justice Department has a duty to carry out the sentences imposed by the courts, including the death penalty, and to bring a sense of closure to the victims and those in the communities where the killings happened.

The decision to move forward with the execution -- and two others scheduled later in the week -- during a global health pandemic that has killed more than 135,000 people in the United States and is ravaging prisons nationwide, drew scrutiny from civil rights groups as well as a family of Lee’s victims.