Daniel Lewis Lee

Note: The COVID pandemic has required a moratorium on in-person visits to prisons. This has prevented many lawyers from providing their clients with necessary counsel. For Daniel Lewis Lee, this meant that his lawyers were denied the full opportunity to potentially save his life.

Daniel Lewis Lee was executed on July 14th in Terre Haute, Indiana. His killing was the first federal execution in seventeen years, and the first of four planned for this summer. Born on January 13, 1973, in Yukon, Oklahoma, Daniel was just 47 years old. We mourn his death and the conditions in which he died.

Daniel’s execution was a site of intense controversy over the past few months, as the coronavirus made it difficult for his lawyers to work on his case. For three months, leading up until the week before his execution, Daniel did not see his lawyers and could not have confidential conversations with them. Furthermore, his lawyers were unable to conduct investigations or have face-to-face interviews with witnesses.

Many family members of Daniel’s victims fought against his execution. Earlene Peterson, the mother of one of the victims, opposed Daniel’s killing but still wanted to attend. However, since she has a heart condition and a lung condition, her doctor told her not to go to the execution to protect her health.

When she learned of the execution date, Earlene and other family members sued the Justice Department for a delay, since the risk of contracting COVID-19 blocked them from flying across the country to the execution site. Though a district court granted a temporary delay, the decision was later overturned and the family’s petition declined by the Supreme Court.

“I can’t see how executing Daniel Lee will honor my daughter in any way,” Earlene told the Equal Justice Initiative. “In fact, it’s kinda like it dirties her name. Because she wouldn’t want it and I don’t want it.”

Daniel’s execution was scheduled for 4 p.m. on July 13th, but last-minute legal battles regarding the constitutionality of the lethal injection protocol delayed his death, and he was not killed until 8:07 a.m. the following morning. He spent the last four hours of his life strapped to a gurney, watched by a U.S. Marshal and a spiritual advisor.

“I didn't do it,” he said in his final words, addressing a room of reporters. “I've made a lot of mistakes in my life but I'm not a murderer. You're killing an innocent man.”

Ruth Friedman, Daniel’s lawyer, was outraged. “It is shameful that the government saw fit to carry out this execution during a pandemic,” she said. “It is shameful that the government saw fit to carry out this execution when counsel for Danny Lee could not be present with him, and when the judges in his case and even the family of his victims urged against it. And it is beyond shameful that the government, in the end, carried out this execution in haste, in the middle of the night, while the country was sleeping. We hope that upon awakening, the country will be as outraged as we are."

“I sobbed,” Earlene said, speaking about her reaction to Daniel’s death. “I’m a mother, I lost my grandbaby and my daughter, so I know how his mother felt.”

“This was a person to us,” Ruth said. “We knew his kindness, his humor, his pain…. It’s like any loss; at first it’s hard to believe the person is gone.”

This memorial was written by MOL team member Andrew Kornfeld based on reporting by Hailey Fuchs of the New York Times; Ariane de Vogue, Chandelis Duster and David Shortell of CNN; The Marshall Project, and the Equal Justice Initiative.

Original artwork by MOL team member EJ Joyner.

Alexander “Reggie” Pettiway

Dewayne Michael Carey