The deaths of Daniel Lewis Lee, Wesley Ira Purkey and Dustin Honken roused the anger of civil liberties lawyers, who say the executions were carried out in a rushed and even unlawful manner. The overarching question in public discussion has been “why” — why did Attorney General William Barr make the executions a priority? And why were they carried out while the country was dealing with a pandemic, racial unrest and a looming election?
Protesters kept away from the federal prison in Terre Haute during executions last month have filed a lawsuit in federal court, arguing the Indiana State Police violated their First Amendment rights by erecting roadblocks and preventing them from holding vigils immediately outside the entrance of the facility.
Derek Romano and Jeremiah Roberts had been drinking homemade wine on a Saturday night in their cell at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility, Romano explained, as he told an investigator how he lost control and beat his cellmate to death. Romano, who is now charged in Roberts’ murder, shared not just a cell with Roberts, but also a criminal history.
A Wabash Valley Correctional Facility inmate was charged with murder Tuesday in the slaying of another prisoner in May, state police said. Both men had been convicted in connection with the robbery and murder of an Indianapolis pizza deliveryman.
The federal government last week carried out its first executions in almost two decades after the US Supreme Court in separate 5-4 rulings turned away last-minute appeals from two condemned inmates’ legal teams. Their executions, and that of a third defendant, were carried out by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute.
Daniel Lewis Lee, a condemned man and convicted murderer, was asked if he wanted to make a final statement from the execution chamber at the federal prison in Terre Haute. He did. He leaned his head up and we locked eyes. “You’re killing an innocent man,” Lee said, looking directly at me. Those were his last words. He said them to me.
The U.S. government on Friday afternoon put to death an Iowa chemistry student-turned-meth kingpin convicted of killing five people, the third execution by the federal government this week at the federal prison in Terre Haute.
The United States on Thursday carried out its second federal execution this week, killing by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute a Kansas man whose lawyers contended he had dementia and was unfit to be executed.
A judge on Wednesday halted the execution of a man said to be suffering from dementia, who had been set to die by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute in the federal government’s second execution after a 17-year hiatus.
The U.S. government on Tuesday carried out the first federal execution in almost two decades, putting to death a man who killed an Arkansas family in a 1990s in a plot to build a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest. The execution came over the objection of the victims’ family.
Family members of three people slain in Arkansas more than 20 years ago have been among the most vocal opponents to the federal government’s plan to execute one of the men convicted of killing their loved ones.
The federal government’s efforts carry out the first federal execution in nearly two decades on Monday in Terre Haute, over the objection of the family of the victims and after a volley of legal proceedings over the coronavirus pandemic, was halted Monday, hours after the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals would have allowed the execution to proceed.
The Justice Department is plowing ahead with its plan to resume federal executions next week for the first time in more than 15 years, despite the coronavirus pandemic raging both inside and outside prisons and stagnating national support for the death penalty.
An Indiana prisoner whose discipline conviction was overturned for lack of evidence did not persuade the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals that his case manager later retaliated against him for activity protected by the First Amendment.
An appellate panel has granted a man’s petition for rehearing, but only to correct a factual error it made in its original decision in his case.
A Zen Buddhist priest, who is a spiritual adviser to one of three federal death row inmates scheduled to be executed this month, filed a lawsuit Thursday arguing the Bureau of Prisons is putting him at risk for the coronavirus by moving forward with executions during a nationwide pandemic.
A judge who overturned prison discipline for an inmate who wrote an unauthorized check to a fellow inmate’s family member left a panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals puzzled in a brief reversal Monday.
An inmate who spat on a correctional officer lost his appeal Tuesday in which he argued, among other things, that Indiana’s battery by bodily fluid statute is unconstitutional for vagueness.
The Supreme Court of the United States on Monday refused to block the execution of four federal prison inmates who are scheduled to be put to death in July and August. The executions, if permitted to proceed after further expected court challenges, would mark the first use of the death penalty on the federal level since 2003.
The Justice Department has set new dates to begin executing federal death-row inmates following a months-long legal battle over the plan to resume the executions for the first time since 2003. If the executions proceed, they would take place at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute.