#Daniel Lewis Lee: 1st federal execution in 17 years set to happen today

The first execution of a federal inmate in nearly two decades will be carried out Monday in Indiana — despite objections from the family members of his victims.

Daniel Lewis Lee, a one-time white supremacist and convicted killer, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 4 p.m. Monday at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, in the first federal execution since 2003.

Lee was sentenced in Arkansas of the 1996 slayings of gun dealer William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell.

Their family has long argued that Lee shouldn’t be executed — and given a life sentence instead.

But a federal appeals court lifted an injunction Sunday that had been put in place last week after the victims’ family asked for a delay due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The family has vowed to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, saying they shouldn’t have to travel amid the pandemic to witness the execution.

“For us it is a matter of being there and saying, `This is not being done in our name; we do not want this,’” relative Monica Veillette told the Associated Press.

The family would need to trek thousands of miles to witness the execution in a small room where socially distancing would be impossible, they have argued.

“The federal government has put this family in the untenable position of choosing between their right to witness Danny Lee’s execution and their own health and safety,” the family’s attorney, Baker Kurrus, said Sunday.

With Post wires