Supreme Court approves capital punishment for man who murdered family in 1996
The U. S. government has carried out its first execution in 17 years after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in an early Tuesday decision to dismiss a lower court’s injunction on three executions scheduled for this week and another set for next month.
Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death with a dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital at a federal prison in Indiana hours after the court released its ruling.
Lee was convicted of murdering a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl, in 1996.
He was originally due to be executed Monday, but hours before that happened a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction on the grounds that courts should have more time to review whether the method of execution violates constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
Lawyers for the four men argued that pentobarbital could cause a type of respiratory distress with the sensation of drowning or suffocating.
