Execution of 'white supremacist' killer Daniel Lee Lewis stayed after victims' family demand clemency: 'The government is not doing this for me'
An Indiana federal court has stayed the execution sentence of convicted killer Daniel Lewis Lee, his attorney Morris Moon said in a statement to MEA World Wide. This stay will "allow him a reasonable opportunity to determine the legality of his sentence," Moon said.
"The judge found a significant possibility that the Government was aware of, and failed to disclose, evidence undermining a key basis for his death sentence, a sentence which the victims’ family, the trial judge and the lead trial prosecutor vehemently oppose," he said.
"The government is not doing this for me,” Earlene Peterson, whose daughter and granddaughter were killed in the 1999 incident said. She, along with her other family members believe that Lee should be granted clemency as it does not offer relief or closure to them, she said. "I can’t see how executing Danny Lee will honor my daughter in any way," she said in a statement.
Lee had filed for relief from the sentence in September earlier this year, as we had reported. The 46-year-old from Oklahoma, along with Chevie Kehoe, was convicted of slaying a Pope County family in 1999, which included an eight-year-old girl. The two were said to be white supremacists who had wanted to steal guns and money from the family, with ambitions to start a whites-only country in the Pacific Northwest.
They were convicted of the murder of Bill Mueller, 53; Nancy Mueller, 28; and Sarah Powell, 8, among other charges. Prosecutors from the U.S. Department of Justice had said that Lee along with Kehoe had first shot the three with a stun gun, covered their heads with plastic bags, and sealed them with duct tape. He then threw the weighted bodies into the Illinois Bayou. While Lee was given the death penalty, Kehoe was given a life sentence. Prosecutors believed that Kehoe had been the leader of the group and Lee was not the ring leader. A psychological evaluation said Lee was a psychopath and a danger to others.
Moon had said at the time that the death sentence was unconstitutional and that it had been a result of "junk science" that had dubbed him a "dangerous psychopath". "That junk science was not the only false evidence the government used to secure a death sentence. It also misled the jury into believing that Mr. Lee had committed a prior murder as a juvenile," he had said in a statement to MEAWW.