Indiana state police officers block a path leading to the Federal Correctional Institution, Terre Haute, as officials await news of the suspension of execution issued by Daniel Lewis Lee, who is convicted of the murder of three members of an Arkansas family in 1996, and would be the first federal execution in 17 years at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA July 13, 2020. REUTERS / Bryan Woolston
(Reuters) – The United States Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the first federal executions in 17 years could proceed, reversing a court order blocking them to allow legal challenges to the government’s lethal injection protocol to continue.
Judge Tanya Chutkan of the United States District Court in Washington on Monday ordered the Justice Department to delay four executions scheduled for July and August.
Chutkan’s order was issued less than seven hours before Daniel Lee’s execution in Terre Haute, Indiana. The order was later confirmed by a United States Court of Appeals.
“The plaintiffs in this case have not made the required filing to justify the last minute intervention by a federal court. Last minute stays like the one issued this morning should be the extreme exception, not the norm, “the Supreme Court said.
“The government has produced its own competing expert testimony, indicating that any pulmonary edema occurs only after the prisoner has died or has become completely insensitive,” the court added.
Attorney General William Barr had announced last July that the Justice Department would resume the execution of some of the 62 inmates on federal death row.
He originally scheduled five executions for last December, but Chutkan ordered him to delay them while long-term lawsuits were carried out that defied the government’s lethal injection protocol.
An appeals court reversed that mandate in April, and Barr announced new execution dates for July and August for four inmates, all men convicted of murdering children: Lee, Wesley Purkey, Dustin Honken, and Keith Nelson.
Reports by Jonathan Allen in New York and Shubham Kalia in Bangalore; Editing by Michael Perry and Ed Osmond
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