On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the first federal executions in 17 years can take place.
The judges ruled 5 to 4 hours after a United States District Judge prevented the execution of four inmates.
Daniel Lewis Lee was originally scheduled to receive a lethal dose of the powerful pentobarbital sedative at 4 p.m. ET on Monday, but a federal judge’s order prevented his execution.
Tuesday’s unsigned Supreme Court majority opinion says “the plaintiffs have not established that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their Eighth Amendment claim” and “that claim faces an extremely high bar.”
The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The majority opinion of the Supreme Court says that executions can proceed as planned. All four executions will take place at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
United States District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled Monday morning that three prisoners sentenced to death and a fourth scheduled for execution in August could file their claim that the federal government’s plan to use a single drug it will cause severe pain and unnecessary suffering.
They claimed that the single-drug protocol, which uses the pentobarbital barbiturate, interferes with breathing before the heart stops, producing a feeling of choking and suffocation, resulting in extreme terror and panic.
Two more executions are scheduled this week: Wesley Ira Purkey on Wednesday and Dustin Lee Honken on Friday. Keith Dwayne Nelson is slated to be executed in August.
In 1996, Lee and four other members of a white supremacist organization embarked on a crime wave that included the murders of the arms dealer William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and their 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell. All five defendants were arrested and convicted.
The four liberal-leaning Supreme Court justices disagreed on Tuesday’s order that allowed executions to continue.
Judge Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent that was joined by Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg in which she wrote that there were “important questions” about the constitutionality of the method the government intended to use.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent that was also joined by Ginsburg and Judge Elena Kagan that the superior court was accepting “the government’s artificial request for urgency to cut off the ordinary judicial review procedures.”
“This court now grants the government’s last-minute request to vacate the stay, allowing death row prisoners to be executed before any court can adequately consider whether their executions are unconstitutionally cruel and unusual,” Kagan wrote in part.
The decision to move forward with Lee’s execution during a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 135,000 people in the United States and is devastating prisons across the country attracted scrutiny from civil rights groups and the family of victims. from Lee.
It has been criticized as a dangerous and political movement. Critics argue that the government is creating an unnecessary and manufactured urgency around an issue that is not high on the list of American concerns at the moment. It’s also likely to add a new front to the national conversation about criminal justice reform in the lead-up to the 2020 elections.
Last year, US Attorney William Barr ordered the Department of Justice to adopt a new rule to apply the death penalty that would restore executions in the federal system.
In June, Barr ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of Lee, Purkey, Honken and Nelson.
He said in a statement at the time that the four have received “complete and fair procedures” and that the government owes the victims and their families compliance with the sentences.
