Kansas killer Keith Nelson who kidnapped, raped and murdered 10-year-old girl executed by lethal injection
Texas death row convict Keith Dwayne Nelson was executed by the US government on Friday night, August 28, hours after an appeals court lifted an injunction by a district court judge. Nelson, who kidnapped, raped, and killed a 10-year-old Kansas girl, was put to death by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Nelson's execution was given a go-ahead hours after Washington DC District Court judge Tanya Chuktan ordered the execution to be halted while Nelson moved forward with claims that the federal government's use of the drug pentobarbital violated the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. Judge Chutkan stated that federal law that regulates drugs requires the government to get a prescription for the lethal injection drug 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 DC Circuit Court of Appeals, however, lifted the injunction set in place and ordered Nelson's execution to proceed as scheduled for Friday, 6 pm.
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 US 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.
Nelson's execution came two days 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 Nelson's execution, has now reportedly carried out more execution in 2020 than it had in the past 56 years combined. Two more executions are scheduled in September.