First federal execution in 17 years carried out in Indiana after Supreme Court cleared way

The U.S. carried out the first federal execution in 17 years at a prison in Indiana after a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling cleared the way.

Daniel Lewis Lee, who was convicted of killing an Arkansas family in a plot to establish a whites-only nation, was executed by lethal injection early Tuesday at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute.

“I didn’t do it,” Lee said before he was executed. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not a murderer. ... You’re killing an innocent man.” He was pronounced dead at 8:07 a.m.

In 1996, Lee and four other associates, who were members of a white supremacist organization, went on a crime spree that included the murders of gun dealer William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her 8-year-old daughter Sarah Powell.

At their 1999 trial, prosecutors said Lee and Chevie Kehoe, who recruited him, stole guns and $50,000 in cash from the Muellers as part of their plan to fund and set up a whites-only nation.

Lee was scheduled to receive a lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital at 4 p.m. Monday, but a federal judge's order prevented the execution.

Hours later, the Supreme Court issued an unsigned majority opinion saying that "the plaintiffs have not established that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their Eighth Amendment claim" and "that claim faces an exceedingly high bar."