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Thread: Daniel Lewis Lee - Federal Execution - July 14, 2020

  1. #181
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Let this be a lesson for everyone that you shouldn't stay up monitoring these and you should get some sleep. We haven't had one that went this late since Gissendaner and that was just as dramatic.

    This was good theater.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  2. #182
    Senior Member CnCP Addict johncocacola's Avatar
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    This may be the last chance to ever conduct federal executions.

  3. #183
    Moderator mostlyclassics's Avatar
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    Let this be a lesson for everyone that you shouldn't stay up monitoring these and you should get some sleep. We haven't had one that went this late since Gissendaner and that was just as dramatic.

    This was good theater.
    Sixteen-plus hours! That may be some kind of record for X-Night Chat.
    "Sorry for the delay, I got caught in traffic." — Rodney Scott Berget, South Dakota, October 29, 2018 — final words.

  4. #184
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by pro pro View Post
    Could this guy be the first execution of the trump administration.
    He actually got this right.

    LOL
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  5. #185
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Executed killer was a menacing skinhead at Aryan Nations compound in North Idaho

    By Bill Morlin
    The Spokesman-Review

    Danny Lewis Lee, a heavily tattooed, violent skinhead and 1990s bit-player at the Aryan Nations in North Idaho, was executed Tuesday at a U.S. penitentiary in Indiana – the first prisoner put to death by the federal government in 17 years.

    I remember Lee very well.

    He angrily confronted me at the Aryan Nations compound in April 1996, contemplating an assault with other skinheads.

    As a reporter for this newspaper, I had gone to the Aryan compound on Rimrock Road, north of Hayden, at the invitation of Aryan founder Richard Butler. My colleague, photographer Craig Buck, joined me.

    Butler greeted us and other journalists while standing at the lectern of his church, adorned with racist flags, artifacts and a bust of Adolf Hitler.

    Lee and a group of skinheads stood in the back of the church, shouting “Heil Victory” after Butler concluded his remarks – like always, denouncing Jews, people of color, the media and the federal government.

    When Butler agreed to take questions, I asked him if he planned on naming a successor to take over leadership of the Aryan Nations. Butler ducked the question and didn’t immediately name his successor.

    The exchange angered Lee. In his view, I had insulted the white supremacist leader – Lee’s guiding light – by suggesting that someday he might die.

    Lee and his skinhead buddies followed us out of the compound church, encircled us, and began screaming in a most menacing fashion.

    A tall, imposing man, Lee had lost his left eye when he was struck with a cue ball during a Spokane bar fight that started when he called an American Indian a racist name.

    Lee refused to wear an eye patch, and his skinhead friends soon were calling him “Cyclops.”

    Now Lee was towering over me, his face near mine.

    Then he spat on me.

    I did not respond and quickly tucked my notebook in a back pocket.

    Craig and I backed safely out of that situation, still not knowing then just how violent and far Lee and his associates were willing to go to further their white supremacy beliefs.

    It wasn’t long after that encounter in North Idaho that a jury convicted Lee for his involvement in the grisly murders of an Arkansas gun dealer, his wife and 8-year-old daughter.

    Their bodies were found taped, bound and weighted with rocks in a bayou. The case shocked and sickened veteran investigators.

    According to eyewitnesses at his execution, Lee continued to profess his innocence until just moments before a lethal dose of the drug phenobarbital was pumped into his arm as he lay strapped to a gurney at the federal prison in Terre Haute. He also claimed to have disavowed his long-held racist views.

    The execution of the 47-year-old Lee came after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene.

    Born in Oklahoma, he became a neo-Nazi skinhead and migrated to the Northwest in the mid-1990s, drawn by the presence of the Aryan Nations, which would later go bankrupt and lose its Idaho compound.

    While in this region, Lee stayed in a house in north Spokane and at the now-abandoned Shadows Motel & RV Park site near the North Division Y, where he hung out with Chevie Kehoe and other racists. They carried out various crimes and plotted a whites-only homeland.

    Their loot included guns stolen from the murdered Arkansas gun dealer, William Mueller.

    The pair had assault rifles, grenades and an estimated 500,000 rounds of ammunition. They traveled from the Shadows, selling the weapons at various gun shows to support their lifestyles, before returning to Spokane.

    A former manager at the Shadows told me in a 1999 interview that Chevie Kehoe spent time building machine guns, homemade blasting caps and small bombs. He used phone books to muffle the blast sounds of his practice devices.

    One bomb was detonated at the doorway of Spokane City Hall in 1996.

    The manager also claimed that a man matching the description of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh had visited the Shadows, looking for detonator material shortly before the April 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. The FBI, however, discounted that possibility.

    Lee and Kehoe also were associated with Faron Lovelace, an escapee later implicated in a North Idaho murder and the kidnapping and robbery of a couple in Colville.

    A jury also convicted Kehoe in 1999 for his involvement in the triple murder, but he escaped the death penalty and received a sentence of life in prison.

    The inequity of the sentences given to Lee and Kehoe was raised but didn’t gain traction during the 21 years Lee spent on death row.

    There are those who say the administration of justice in death penalty cases certainly isn’t quick, and the repeated postponement of the execution dates seems to add to the argument that it’s cruel and unusual.

    The victims’ families pleaded with the Justice Department and the Trump Administration to spare Lee’s life during a pandemic.

    After hearing that the execution had been carried out, I reflected on all those thoughts ricocheting with my personal opposition to the death penalty.

    It’s as though Danny Lee’s spit is still wet on my shirt.

    https://www.spokesman.com/stories/20...ad-at-aryan-n/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  6. #186
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    Technically, this guy was officially sentenced in 2002. The jury just recommend death in 1999. A judge formally agreed to heed the jury’s recommendation in May of 2002.
    Last edited by Neil; 08-13-2020 at 04:22 PM.

  7. #187
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    I watched the execution of a killer in Indiana. My senses are still overloaded.

    I’ll never find the words to fully describe what I experienced Tuesday as a witness to the execution of convicted killer Daniel Lewis Lee. And certainly not under the pressure of a daily newspaper deadline.

    As I write this, my senses are still overloaded. I've been awake for more than 30 hours. I haven’t had time to process what I saw and felt. Am I a ghoul? A witness to history? Or is it more simple: a dedicated reporter with an opportunity to pull back the curtain on one of the darkest deeds of a civilized society?

    I and about 20 others watched through glass windows at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute as the 47-year-old was executed from a deadly dose of pentobarbital pumped into his arm. Strapped onto a gurney in the sterile confines of the federal government’s execution chamber, he appeared to slip off into a peaceful slumber after a few labored breaths.

    He was pronounced dead at 8:07 a.m.

    Lee landed on death row after a 1999 conviction on three counts of murder in aid of racketeering. The charges stemmed from a 1996 robbery in which Arkansas gun dealer William Mueller, 52, wife Nancy, 28, and 8-year-old daughter Sarah Powell were taken prisoner, bound with plastic bags taped over their heads, and dumped in a bayou. A federal jury sentenced Lee to death on May 13, 2002.

    Lee was the 1st federal death row inmate execution since 2003, in part due to a growing debate over the most proper drug or drugs to use in lethal injections.

    Lee also is the 1st person I've watched die. I’ve seen bodies at traffic accidents and shooting scenes. I’ve seen the corpses of my parents. But I’ve never watched that moment when a person transitions from life to death.

    I am unsure how I feel. I may never be.

    Executions resume in Terre Haute

    Here is how I found myself in Terre Haute this week, wracked and overwhelmed as I watched Lee’s execution from just a few feet away.

    I volunteered last week to help with IndyStar's coverage of the execution, which included serving as a witness if no other reporter wanted the opportunity. I didn't approach the assignment lightly. I tried to think it through as best I could. I prayed about it. I read witness accounts from some of the last federal executions nearly 2 decades ago.

    I would not have been disappointed had the execution been blocked by the courts. I thought that might have been the case late Friday when a judge issued a ruling temporarily blocking the execution. The ruling was the first of many yo-yo swings that continued right up to a few minutes before the execution.

    Over the weekend, the legal fight between attorneys for Lee and the relatives of some of his victims and the U.S. Department of Justice continued to put in doubt the execution scheduled for 4 p.m. Monday. The execution was back on, then off again.

    When I left Monday morning for Terre Haute, Lee's fate still remained up in the air. I was frustrated by all the waiting, the on-again off-again reversals.

    In advance of the execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, anti-death penalty protestors demonstrate at the intersection of U.S. 41 and Springhill Road near the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., on Monday, July 13, 2020.

    I felt guilty. I had to tell myself to check my petty emotions. So many others — from Lee to his victims’ loved ones to the prison officials with a hand in Lee’s death — would have so much more at stake than the inconveniences I was facing.

    I met up with the other seven media witnesses a little after 2 p.m. at a Bureau of Prisons training center just outside the prison. Everyone was required to wear a mask. We were seated at eight individual tables to ensure social distancing. Each table had a bottle of hand sanitizer.

    After a brief orientation about what was supposed to happen over the next few hours, we sealed our phones and other personal belongings into plastic bags and boarded 2 white vans for the 5-minute ride to the penitentiary's administrative complex. There, we went through a security checkpoint. It was like an airport screening. Pockets emptied. Shoes off. Body scanned.

    After the check, we climbed back into the vans — 4 journalists and 2 prison officials in each one — and returned to the training center. Then we waited for the call directing us to the execution chamber. And waited.

    4 o'clock came and went. Then five. Finally, around 6 p.m., we were told we could go get something to eat. But that meant we would need to go through screening again before we went to the execution chamber.

    We all returned to the center between 7 and 8 p.m. and waited some more. About 10 p.m., we were told appeals before a federal district court and the U.S. Supreme Court were underway and it could be "a while" before there were rulings. They would text us when it was time to return.

    Waiting on word of an execution

    I was too wired to sleep at my motel room, so I watched “Chopped,” “American Pickers” and other shows on TV until about 2 a.m. I contemplated driving home to Brownsburg but decided to try to get some sleep there.

    At 2:18 a.m. my phone pinged with a text message: "Please make your way back to the Media Center we will be resuming the execution at approximately 4 a.m."

    I got dressed, grabbed a Diet Coke from the cooler I brought and hustled back to the center. The Supreme Court had voted 5-4 to allow the execution to move forward.

    The other reporters and I loaded back into the vans at 4 a.m. and again headed to the administrative complex for a new security screen. After that we stopped on a prison road outside the execution chamber to let other witnesses in vans in front of us enter the building.

    Prison officials said there were 4 groups of witnesses: members of Lee's family, relatives of the victims, Justice Department and prison officials, and us. We were all kept separate as we entered exterior doors that opened into witness rooms for each group.

    We were escorted in around 4:20 a.m., walking silently past heavily armed guards. We were accompanied by 4 prison representatives. The media room was stuffy and small. About 15-by-15 feet. The walls were cream colored concrete blocks. We were seated in plastic, stackable chairs. They faced two 4-by-4-foot windows, trimmed in green paint. Each window was covered by a shade that blocked our view of what was on the other side.

    We were not allowed to take anything in the room. No phones or recorders. No watches. No notebooks. Once inside, we each were provided a legal pad and one pen by the prison.

    A prison official said Lee had been strapped to a gurney in the room blocked by the shades since about 4 a.m. Lee was reportedly accompanied by an attorney and spiritual advisor as he, and we, waited some more.

    1 hour. 2 hours. We could hear birds chirping outside and occasionally muffled bits of conversation from other rooms in the building built specifically to carry out executions.

    Finally, at 7:10 a.m. — nearly 3 hours after we were escorted into the locked room — a prison official explained that Lee's attorneys had made one last appeal and a decision was expected soon. At 7:46 a.m., the shades covering the two windows rolled up, and we came face-to-face with Lee.

    He was wearing a brown T-shirt, his torso covered in an aqua blue sheet and his arms bound to supports to his sides. He didn't look like the threatening young white nationalist in the photos from his arrest and trial in the late ‘90s. His dark hair was grey and thinning. He looked so much older. The “rolling sevens” tattoo on his neck, a symbol of white supremacy, not visible.

    Lee looked up briefly at us. 2 small hoses running from a stainless steel port in the green tile wall behind the gurney were attached to IVs. One in his left elbow, the other on his right hand. In a matter of minutes they would administer the lethal injection.

    A few and final words

    Before officials proceeded with the execution, Lee made a brief statement. He denied murdering the family he was convicted of killing and said he and his co-defendant were in another part of the country at the time. He also complained that courts dismissed valuable DNA evidence.

    His last words: "You're killing an innocent man."

    A federal official then made a call on a hotline to verify there were no more legal challenges to moving forward.

    Lee lay quietly as the drug flowed into his veins. His chest rose and dropped slowly. At a couple of points over the next two to three minutes Lee fluttered his lips, like he was blowing bubbles. But nothing came out. His head bobbed up and to the right, then dropped back down. He appeared to run his tongue over his lips, and one hand twitched.

    I stepped back from the window and said a short prayer for him. And for me.

    Then I resumed talking notes.

    After about 3 minutes, Lee lay motionless. He remained that way for about five more minutes before a prison official pronounced him dead at 8:07 a.m.

    The window shade rolled back down, and we were hustled out of the building and back to the vans.

    16 hours after his originally scheduled death sentence, Daniel Lewis Lee became the 1st federal inmate to be executed since 2003. Federal officials are planning 2 more executions this week, but I won't be a witness to those.

    I don't want to see another man die.

    (source: Tim Evans, South Bend Tribune)
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  8. #188
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    The crime series FBI Files has an episode on the Mueller Family Murders, but for some Lee is not mentioned in the episode at all, despite the episode premiering a year after the jury recommended death

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