The United States executes a federal inmate for the first time in 17 years, putting to death a man who was convicted of killing a family in the 1990s as part of a plot to build a whites-only nation.
Key points:
- White supremacist Daniel Lewis Lee was convicted two decades ago for the murder of a family in Arkansas
- The Trump administration says the reinstatement of the death penalty at the federal level will bring closure to victims of serious crimes
- Some 22 US states have abolished the death penalty and there is a moratorium in several others
Daniel Lewis Lee, 47, was executed by lethal injection at a federal prison in the state of Indiana, making it the first execution undertaken by the US Bureau of Prisons since 2003.
Lee professed his innocence just before he was put to death.
“I didn’t do it,” Lee said. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not a murderer.”
The decision to move forward with the execution — and two others scheduled later in the week — during a global health pandemic that has killed more than 135,000 people in the United States and is ravaging prisons nationwide, drew scrutiny from civil rights groups as well as the family of Lee’s victims.
Critics argued that the Government was creating an unnecessary and manufactured urgency for political gain.
“The Government has been trying to plow forward with these executions despite many unanswered questions about the legality