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Attorney General William P. Barr has issued the following statement:“This morning, in the first federal execution in 17 years, Daniel Lewis Lee was executed by lethal injection at FCI Terre Haute in accordance with a death sentence imposed by a federal district court in 1999.  Lee, a member of a white supremacist organization, brutally murdered William Frederick Mueller and Nancy Ann Mueller, along with her eight-year-old daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Powell.  After robbing and shooting them with a stun gun, Lee duct-taped plastic bags around their heads, weighed down each victim with rocks, and drowned the family in the Illinois...

he U.S. on Tuesday carried out its first federal execution in almost two decades, killing by lethal injection a man convicted of murdering an Arkansas family in a 1990s plot to build a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest. The execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, over the objection of the victims’ relatives and following days of legal wrangling and delays, revived the debate over capital punishment during a time of widespread social unrest. *** Lee, 47, of Yukon, Oklahoma, professed his innocence just before he was executed at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. “I didn’t do it," Lee...

ERRE HAUTE, Indiana (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge issued an injunction on Monday delaying what would have been the first federal execution in 17 years, scheduled for later in the day, thwarting at least for now the Trump administration’s goal of reviving capital punishment at the federal level. Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. district court in Washington ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to delay four executions scheduled for July and August to allow continuation of the condemned men’s legal challenges against a new lethal injection protocol announced in 2019. “The scientific evidence before the court overwhelmingly indicates...

Two San Quentin Prison death row inmates died Friday from what appear to be complications related to the COVID-19 coronavirus, according to a statement from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. There have been at least three death row inmates at the prison who have died of the virus since June 24. Scott Thomas Erskine, 57, had been on California's death row since 2004, and Manuel Machado Alvarez, 59, had been on death row since 1989, both died on July 3, 2020, at outside hospitals. A third death row inmate at San Quentin, Richard Stitely, 71, died June 24...

On this date in 1865, the Japanese samurai Okada Izo was dispatched by crucifixion. He was one of* the “Four Hitokiri“ — manslayers — whose legendary blades coruscated in the Bakumatsu era that marked Japan’s pivot from an isolationist feudal state, one where samurai were big men on prefectures, to a burgeoning modern power ruled by industry and mass conscription. The irony was that dinosaurs like the Hitokiri helped bring the asteroid down on their own heads. During the chaotic Bakumatsu period, triggered by Japan’s becoming involuntarily opened to the outside world, the emperor — long a figurehead marginalized by...

The State Department inspector general whose recent dismissal ignited a political firestorm sent copies detailing a sensitive investigation to his personal email account, according to a probe into his conduct run by the Defense Department's inspector general. The inquiry report, dated March 17, confirms that fired State Department inspector general Steve Linick was the subject of a broad investigation related to the leaks of politically charged materials to journalists, specifically a draft evaluation report into Brian Hook, the State Department’s top Iran official. The report, which was provided to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, concluded that while Linick was permitted...

Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told a press briefing an officer was shot around 11 p.m. Monday night and is in critical condition and on life support at University Medical Center. Lombardo said officers were dealing with a large group of rioters at a George Floyd protest near the Circus Circus hotel-casino when the officer went down. Rioters were allegedly throwing rocks and debris at the officers before the officer was shot, KTNV Las Vegas reports. “Our officers were attempting to take rocks and bottles from the crowd,” said Lombardo during the press conference. “Officers were attempting to get some...

This date in 1965 saw the end of the road (and the end of the rope) for Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, the drifters who slaughtered the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, and inspired Truman Capote’s magnum opus In Cold Blood.

Abdul Majed was hanged at the Dhaka Central Jail on Sunday after he was found hiding in India for nearly two-and-a-half decades.Bangladesh has executed a former military captain for his involvement in the 1975 coup in which the country's founder Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated, nearly four-and-a-half decades after the massacre. Abdul Majed was hanged at the Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj at 12:01 AM (local time) on Sunday, bdnews24.com reported. Jailor Mahbubul Islam said that Mazed was executed by hanging. He was arrested in Dhaka on Tuesday after hiding in India for nearly two-and-a-half decades. On Friday, Majed's...

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus prompted the top Texas criminal appeals court on Monday to stay for 60 days the scheduled execution of a man condemned for killing his family. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected all grounds of John William Hummel's appeal but said it would postpone the scheduled Wednesday execution "in light of the current health crisis and the enormous resources needed to address the execution." One of the issues that Michael Mowla, Hummel's attorney, had raised in his efforts to stop the execution was a concern that the process involved with putting Hummel to death...

He killed his grandmother. And he did so brutally, dumping her in the water before she was even dead, if the coroner is correct that her cause of death was drowning. He killed two others -- all evil acts. And then once in prison, he managed to kill a fellow inmate. So, I get why the governor of Tennessee refused to grant Nick Sutton clemency when the time came for his execution and final appeals. But no one was asking for the man to be released. Instead, people -- including prison staff and the sister of the inmate he killed...

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Wednesday denied clemency to death row inmate Nicholas "Nick" Sutton one day before his scheduled execution. Sutton, 58, is scheduled to die by electric chair Thursday evening for the 1985 murder of Carl Estep. "After careful consideration of Nicholas Sutton's request for clemency and a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the state of Tennessee and will not be intervening," Lee said in a statement released Wednesday morning. Kevin Sharp, Sutton's attorney, described his client's petition as "a once-in-a-lifetime case for clemency." "He has saved the lives of three corrections...

A Texas man who murdered five family members, including his 7-year-old and 9-month-old daughters, apologized to his in-laws and thanked his father and Jesus for turning around his life before he was executed Thursday evening. Abel Revill Ochoa, 47, was denied his last appeal an hour before his execution by lethal injection 18 years after he shot his wife, Cecilia, two daughters, Crystal and Anahi, his father-in-law, Bartolo, and his sisters-in-law Alma and Jackie with a handgun. Alma was the only one who survived. He shot his eldest daughter, Crystal, four times, the Houston Chronicle reported “ I would like to thank God, my dad,...

Georgia has executed Donnie Lance, reporting the time of death as 9:05 p.m. Wednesday. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Lance’s appeals Wednesday evening, clearing the way for his execution. The high court, in two separate orders, declined to hear Lance’s requests that it halt his execution on grounds of alleged prosecution misconduct and lower-court rulings that denied his request for DNA testing. Content Continues Below The orders were published at least one hour after Lance was to be executed at 7 p.m. Lance was put to death by lethal injection for the 1997 murders of his ex-wife and her boyfriend...

The Board of Pardons and Paroles declined Tuesday to grant clemency to Donnie Lance, a 65-year-old inmate whose execution looms. Attorneys for Lance have motions before several courts to halt his death, but barring any last minute intervention, he is expected to be executed after 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. The method of death will be a lethal injection of pentobarbital, punishment for the 1997 brutal murders of Lance’s ex-wife Joy Lance, 39, and her boyfriend, Dwight “Butch” Wood Jr., 33. The inmate’s children, whose mother was Joy Lance, pleaded with the board...

Believing they had stopped a stolen car after a miles-long pursuit, two California sheriff’s deputies tried to arrest a carjacking victim... Body camera video from the November incident begins mid-chase, during which authorities said David Ward, 52, twice stopped for deputies only to flee again. Speeds at one point reached 73 mph before a deputy, trailed by two officers from the Sebastopol Police Department, stopped Ward at a dead-end in Bloomfield, about a 30-minute drive southwest of Santa Rosa. Deputies Charlie Blount and Jason Little, veterans with the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, tried to extract Ward from the car, but...

An elite police officer who helped arrest the son of El Chapo was shot 155 times in a brutal car park execution. The 30-year-old officer, identified only as Eduardo, is reported to have been killed outside a shopping centre in the city of Culiacan. He had helped detain Ovidio Guzman, El Chapo's son, last month. He was promptly released. According to local media, the victim was a member of the operation launched by the Culiacan authorities to arrest El Chapo’s son and extradite him to the United States.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, who is challenging President Trump in the Republican primaries, proclaimed Monday that the president committed treason through his controversial phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky -- adding that the punishment for treason is death. The statement drew a swift rebuke from the Trump campaign. “The media’s affliction with Trump Derangement Syndrome has driven them into an actual discussion of the proposed execution of the President of the United States,” communications director Tim Murtaugh told Fox News. “In severe cases of TDS such as this, immediate consultation with a physician is recommended.” Weld was responding...

A mass murderer known as the “I-95 killer,” who spent the majority of 1994 targeting gay men -- including a Navy World War II veteran -- ate three burgers, fries and bacon before he was executed late Thursday in Florida. Gary Ray Bowles, 57, was pronounced dead at 10:58 p.m. Thursday evening after receiving a lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Starke, the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said. Bowles had already eaten his last meal by 3 p.m. that afternoon, prison officials told WJXT. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal filed by Bowles’ attorneys...

A little after 6 p.m., the state of Texas will execute Larry Swearingen for a crime experts believe he was unable to commit. Journalist Andrew Purcell detailed the events leading to Swearingen's impending death in a thorough investigation. A 19-year-old college student named Melissa Trotter disappeared from her Montgomery College campus, north of Houston, in December 1998. Police set their sights on Swearingen, an electrician who was witnessed having a conversation with Trotter in the college library. Montgomery County law enforcement also found a scrap of paper with the name "Larry" and his phone number in one of Trotter's books....