The first execution to be carried out by the federal government in more than 17 years appears to be nearing again after the Supreme Court stepped in during overnight hours to clear away a lower court injunction
The first execution to be carried out by the federal government in more than 17 years appeared to be nearing again Tuesday after a sharply-divided Supreme Court stepped in during the overnight hours to clear away a lower court injunction that blocked the Trump administration’s plan.
The unsigned opinion explaining the Supreme Court’s majority’s rationale noted the prevalence of the one-drug lethal injection method the federal government embraced for the upcoming executions and expressed disfavor for the last-ditch legal maneuvering that led to the executions being called off at about 11 A.M. Monday, about five hours before inmate Daniel Lee, 47, was set to die at the Indiana prison.
The court’s Democratic appointed justices penned two dissents. Justice Stephen Breyer, who has become the court’s most outspoken skeptic of the constitutionality of the death penalty, said he was deeply troubled by the fact that the first inmate to be executed has been on death row since 1999 It was not immediately clear when the government would proceed with the execution of Lee, who was sentenced to death for the brutal 1996 murder of a family of three in Arkansas as part of what prosecutors described as a robbery aimed at raising funds for a white supremacist organization. Spokespeople for the Bureau of Prisons and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to request for comment early Tuesday.
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