The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal after a federal judge blocked its first scheduled execution over coronavirus concerns.
The move came Friday evening after Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson, chief judge in the Southern District of Indiana, filed an injunction that prohibits the chief law enforcement agency from executing Daniel Lewis Lee, who was found guilty of murdering a family of three, including an 8-year-old child.
The family of the victims, Nancy Mueller and Sarah Powell, argued that there was “no legitimate reason” for Lee’s execution to continue as scheduled due to the coronavirus outbreaks in prisons.
Magnus-Stinson said the order would be lifted if federal authorities demonstrated a “reasonable consideration of the plaintiffs’ right to be present for the execution.”
In response, the DOJ argued it planned to “take an extensive array of precautions to mitigate the risk,” further adding that if executions were postponed until the procurement of a coronavirus vaccine, it would create “an indefinite delay.”
“Although the government endeavors to facilitate attendance by victims’ family members who wish to attend a scheduled execution, no permissible witness has a statutory entitlement to attend the execution,” the DOJ wrote in its response.
Last year, Attorney General William Barr ordered executions to resume, beginning with five men convicted of murdering or raping children and the elderly. They would be the first federal punishments of death carried out since 2003.
“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the president,” Barr said at the time. “The Justice Department upholds the rule of law.”
Barr ordered a change to the chemical compound used for federal executions, which was a combination of three drugs, to a single drug: phenobarbital. When administered in high doses, the drug causes respiratory arrest. It has been used in 200 executions since 2010 and has been permitted by the high court in the past by states as consistent with the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department scheduled the execution of four convicted child murderers, including Lee, Wesley Purkey, Dustin Honken, and Keith Nelson.
“The American people, acting through Congress and Presidents of both political parties, have long instructed that defendants convicted of the most heinous crimes should be subject to a sentence of death,” Barr said in a statement. “The four murderers whose executions are scheduled today have received full and fair proceedings under our Constitution and laws. We owe it to the victims of these horrific crimes, and to the families left behind, to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
Last year, a federal judge blocked the DOJ’s decision to move forward with executions, but a three-judge panel on the District of Columbia U.S. Court of Appeals sided with the Trump administration in the spring.
“We do share the government’s concern about further delay from multiple rounds of litigation,” the appeals court said in a 2-1 decision. “But the government did not seek immediate resolution of all the plaintiffs’ claims, including the constitutional claims and the claim that the protocol and addendum are arbitrary and capricious under the APA.”
However, the appeals court did note that the executions would be put on hold while litigation in lower court settings continued.
