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Kansas killer Keith Nelson's execution halted: Was Trump's office bypassing law without lethal drug prescription?

Nelson's attorney Dale Baich, in a statement to MEA Worldwide (MEAWW), said that the Trump administration was taking a 'shortcut' to ramp up his client's execution
PUBLISHED AUG 27, 2020
(Wyandotte County Sheriff's Office)
(Wyandotte County Sheriff's Office)

A US district judge, on Thursday, August 27, put a halt on death row convict Keith Dwayne Nelson's execution scheduled on Friday. The execution date for Nelson, who kidnapped, raped, and killed a 10-year-old Kansas girl, was set by the federal government in June this year. The judge reportedly said that the law requires the government to get a prescription for the drug it plans to use to execute Nelson. 

Judge Tanya Chutkan, in her opinion, stated that federal law that regulates drugs requires the government to get a prescription for the lethal injection drug pentobarbital, which the federal government plans to use in Nelson's execution in Terre Haute, Indiana. His execution was scheduled to be the fifth one to be carried out by the federal government after a 17-year moratorium. “It is also undisputed,” she wrote, "that the government has not obtained a prescription — nor does it intend to — for the use of pentobarbital in Nelson's execution... The court hereby enjoins Defendants from executing Keith Nelson until they have met the requirements of the FDCA,” Chutkan wrote. All the executions conducted by the federal government have been carried out using pentobarbital.

Shortly after the judge's ruling, Nelson's attorney Dale Baich, in a statement to MEA Worldwide (MEAWW), said that the Trump administration was taking a "shortcut" to ramp up his client's execution. “The government got caught taking shortcuts and the district court ruled that they cannot make an end-run around the law. Here, the government made a choice to use compounded drugs and in so doing was taking a risk that it would violate the FDCA," Baich said. The government has reportedly argued that pentobarbital is not subject to federal law when used for lethal injections.

Nelson, now 46, kidnapped 10-year-old Pamela Butler in 1999 when she was rollerblading near her house. He reportedly grabbed her, threw her in his pickup truck, and escaped. Nelson's sister, Casey Eaton, witnessed the kidnapping and ran behind the truck at the time when a passerby noted down the license number after seeing her in distress. Days later, Pamela's body was found in a wooded area behind a church in Grain Valley. Autopsy results showed that the perpetrator had raped her and strangled her to death with a wire. A widely-publicized manhunt was launched for Nelson, who was linked to the crime scene two years later through his DNA. His arrest was broadcast on television in 2001. Years later, Eaton was also shot near the area Pamela was kidnapped from. 

Nelson, on October 25, 2001, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri to the kidnapping and unlawful interstate transportation of a child for the purpose of sexual abuse which resulted in death. He was subsequently sentenced to death.

The judge's opinion on Nelson's execution came just hours after the government executed Lezmond Mitchell, the only Native American on federal death row, despite Navajo leaders objecting to the death sentence. Tribal leaders from across the nation, last week, had made an urgent call to President Trump in a letter, supporting clemency for Mitchell. The National Congress of American Indians, the oldest, largest and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization, the leaders of thirteen separate Native American tribes, and more than 230 Native American citizens from over 90 different tribal affiliations sent the letters to Trump. 
 
The federal government, with Mitchell's execution, has now reportedly carried out more execution in 2020 than it had in the past 56 years combined. There are two more executions that are scheduled in September.

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