The U.S. government executed a convicted murderer on Thursday in the second federal execution in as many days after a 17-year pause, overcoming court orders that said condemned men should have time to contest the legality of a new one-drug lethal-injection protocol.
FILE PHOTO: The execution chamber in the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Bureau of Prisons/via REUTERS
Relatives of the victims of Daniel Lee, who was executed on Tuesday, opposed his execution in anguish, noting his accomplice in the murder of an Arkansas family in 1996 had been sentenced instead to life in prison. If a third convicted murderer is put to death on Friday as planned, President Donald Trump’s administration will have completed as many federal executions in a single week as happened in the preceding 57 years, though executions by some state governments remain common.
Inmates on federal death row, including Purkey and Lee, sued the Justice Department over the protocol, saying it would cause unconstitutional suffering as the caustic drug quickly filled their lungs with bloody fluid before they lost consciousness. Twice this week, a 5-4 majority in the Supreme Court cast out Chutkan’s injunctions. But the court’s liberal justices have questioned whether any form of capital punishment can be allowed.
FILE PHOTO: A general view of U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., June 25, 2020. REUTERS/Al Drago
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