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The Supreme Court ruled early on Tuesday morning that the first federal executions in 17 years can be carried out.
The decision came hours after a U.S. District Judge blocked the execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, a 47-year-old white supremacist who was convicted of torturing and killing three people, including an 8-year-old girl, in 1996.
Lee is one of four prisoners who had brought a legal challenge on the basis that the single drug used in the executions — pentobarbital — interferes with breathing before the heart is stopped. This produces a sensation of drowning or asphyxiation, resulting in extreme terror and panic.
The Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision by a 5-4 ruling, saying in an unsigned opinion that the prisoners’ “executions may proceed as planned because the plaintiffs have not established that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their Eighth Amendment claim" and "that claim faces an exceedingly high bar."
The Eighth Amendment prevents cruel and unusual punishment.
According to court papers seen by AP, Lee’s execution was scheduled for 4 a.m. ET, but there has been no confirmation that it was completed.
Along with Lee, Wesley Ira Purkey and Dustin Lee Honken were both scheduled to be executed this week. Keith Dwayne Nelson is scheduled to be executed in August. All four executions are to take place at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Civil rights groups and the family of Lee’s victims questioned the timing of the executions, which are taking place in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic that is ravaging large parts of the U.S.
Earlene Peterson — whose daughter, granddaughter, and son-in-law were tortured, killed, and dumped in a lake by Lee and an accomplice — has repeatedly said she opposed Lee's execution, saying she wants him to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Last year the Trump administration announced it would resume federal executions after an informal moratorium on the practice that lasted almost two decades. Last month, Attorney General William Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of Lee, Purkey, Honken, and Nelson.
The four liberal judges on the Supreme Court bench dissented against Tuesday’s decision to allow the executions.
In dissents, the justices questioned the legitimacy of the single-drug protocol the government was going to use, and said the rushed nature of the ruling did not allow the defendants adequate time to present their case.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent that was also joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as well as Justice Elena Kagan that the court was accepting “the Government’s artificial claim of urgency to truncate ordinary procedures of judicial review.”
“This Court now grants the Government’s last-minute application to vacate the stay, allowing death-sentenced inmates to be executed before any court can properly consider whether their executions are unconstitutionally cruel and unusual,” Kagan wrote in part.
Cover: Protesters against the death penalty gather in Terre Haute, Ind., Monday, July 13, 2020, where Daniel Lewis Lee, a convicted killer, was scheduled to be executed Monday at the federal prison in Terre Haute. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
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