(Washington) Former white supremacist sentenced to death for triple murder was executed Tuesday during the first federal execution since 16 years in the United States, under the leadership of the government of Donald Trump who demands an increased use of capital punishment.
Published on 14 July 2020 at 9 a.m. 52 Updated to 13 h 04
France Media Agency
Daniel Lee, died at 8 a.m. 07 of a lethal injection at Terre Haute prison in Indiana, the Justice Department announced.
“You kill an innocent man”, said the condemned man before dying, according to a reporter for the Indianapolis Star who attended the execution.
Daniel Lee’s lawyer Ruth Friedman denounced in a press release a sentence carried out “hastily, in the middle of the night, while the country was asleep”.
She pointed out that the condemned patient had waited four hours, strapped to his death bed, awaiting the result of a final appeal.
The American section of Amnesty International said it was “horrified” by this execution “which goes against a worldwide tendency to abandon the death penalty”.
“The American people have made the conscious choice to authorize the death penalty for the most savage crimes and justice was done today by applying the sentence for the horrible crimes” of Daniel Lee, on the contrary affirmed Minister of Justice Bill Barr.
In America, the debate on the application of the death penalty, reinstated in 1988 at the federal level, remains lively with support eroded in the American population but which remains strong among Republican voters.
In this country, most crimes are tried at the state level and some, especially in the South, continue to apply the death penalty. Seven people were thus executed by local courts in 2020.
Legal recourse
But the federal justice can seize the most serious acts (terrorist attacks, racist crimes …) or committed on military bases, between several States or on Amerindian reserves.
Since 1988, only three people have been executed at the federal level including Timothy McVeigh, responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing (168 dead in 1995) in 2001.
Donald Trump, who will run for a second term on November 3, is an ardent supporter of capital punishment, especially for police killers or drug traffickers.
Daniel Lee, 47 years old, had been found guilty in 1999 of the murder of a couple and their 8-year-old daughter in Arkansas three years earlier, during a robbery intended to finance a supremacist group.
He was to be executed on Monday, the first of four death row inmates scheduled to be executed by the end of August, but last-minute legal proceedings have delayed the proceedings.
The condemned claimed that the protocol of execution – a lethal dose of pentobarbital – would make them suffer “irreparable” suffering in violation of the Constitution, an argument often used by opponents of the death penalty.
During the night, the Supreme Court gave the green light to the federal authorities for this execution, the first since 2003.
The Court found that the four men, sentenced to death for the murder of children, had “not taken the necessary steps to justify the last minute intervention by a federal court” and that executions could therefore “take place as planned”.
Next execution Wednesday
The American high court also dismissed the appeal of the mother of two victims, Earlene Peterson, 81 years, who requested the postponement of the execution of Daniel Lee due to the coronavirus pandemic.
She refused to choose between her right to attend the last moments of the convicted person and the protection of his health, whereas a case of COVID – 19 was made public Sunday at Terre Haute.
According to the journalist present at the prison on Tuesday morning, around twenty witnesses attended the execution.
Ms. Peterson, who claims to support Donald Trump, also unsuccessfully asked the President to commute the death penalty to life imprisonment, which was given to a second man who played a central role in these murders.
For their part, a thousand religious leaders, Catholic and evangelical, called on the president to “focus on the protection of life and not on executions” in these times of COVID – 19.
The next death row inmate, Wesley Purkey, 68 years, must be executed on Wednesday, still at Terre Haute. He was convicted in 2003 of raping and killing a young girl from 16 years.
