Lee is scheduled to be executed on Monday, which would be the first federal execution in 17 years.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Circuit of the District of Columbia rejected on Monday night the request of the Department of Justice to suspend the mandate. The Justice Department also appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.
Three other appeals seeking to delay execution are also pending in the Supreme Court. One refers to the family of Lee’s victims who are concerned about traveling and going to federal prison during the coronavirus pandemic. A second concerns the evidence presented by prosecutors during their sentencing hearing.
Lee, a former white supremacist who killed a family of three, was originally scheduled for execution in December, but his case was delayed after courts blocked the execution of the death sentence.
It is anticipated that Lee’s scheduled execution will be the time when the federal government once again began to fulfill the fate of death row inmates after a series of court decisions in recent months.
In December, the Supreme Court confirmed a lower court that blocked the execution of the death sentence last year. But an appeals court decided in April that executions could move forward, and Attorney General William Barr set new dates for Lee and three other men in June. Since then, the men’s attorneys have made several last-minute efforts to delay executions, including the lawsuit filed this week by the family of Lee’s victims.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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