BYMARTY JOHNSONANDJOHN KRUZEL-
Prison officials said inmate Daniel Lewis Lee on Tuesday became the first federal prisoner executed in more than 17 years, just hours after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against a last-minute attempt to halt the execution.
According to a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson, Lee, a 47 year-old white supremacist convicted of killing a family of three in 1996, was executed by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. He was pronounced dead at 8:07 am.
Lee spoke his last words, according to a reporter with the Indianapolis Star who witnessed the execution, saying, “You’re killing an innocent man.”
Lee's execution came only hours after the U.S. Supreme Court overruled a lower court and cleared the way for federal executions to be carried out for the first time since 2003.
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