Daniel Lewis Lee was an American white supremacist and convicted murderer who was sentenced to death for the 1996 murders of a gun dealer, William Frederick Mueller, his wife, Nancy Ann Mueller, and his 8-year-old step-daughter Sarah Elizabeth Powell. He was executed at the age of 47 on July 14, 2020, at The Federal Correctional Institute, Terre Haute, Indiana after 24 years of his crime by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 8:07 a.m. EDT. He was the first person to be executed by the federal government in 17 years.
Lee was able to commit murder with his accomplice, Chevie Kehoe, who was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences and was also executed the same day on July 14. Their execution had been blocked after victims said they feared they would catch Covid-19 if they attended, but the government appealed and the injunction was overturned.
What was Daniel Lewis Lee Famous for?
- Known as a convicted murderer who was the first person to be executed by the federal government in 17 years.
Source: @wthi
Where was Daniel Lewis Lee Born?
Daniel Lewis Lee was born on January 31, 1973, in Yukon, Oklahoma, United States. His birth name was Daniel Lewis Lee. His nationality was American. Lee belonged to White ethnicity while Aquarius was his zodiac sign.
Lee was reportedly abused and neglected as a child which further encouraged him to take out his anger on others.
Early Fight and Sentencing
When Lee was 17, he got into an altercation with another man, Joseph “Joey” Wavra III, at a party on July 24, 1990. He struck Wavra in the face and kicked him on the floor once he had collapsed. He then assisted his cousin, John David Patton to kill Wavra with a knife and dispose of Wavra’s clothes.
On December 2, 1990, Lee pleaded guilty to robbery and was sentenced to five years imprisonment for his involvement in the crime, while Patton was sentenced to life without parole. Soon after his release, he met white supremacist Chevie Kehoe in 1995 and joined a group called “The APR”(the Aryan Peoples’ Republic or the Aryan Peoples’ Resistance).
Following just a few months after his release, he was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and was sentenced to six months probation on May 3, 1995.
Source: @thesun.co.uk
Daniel Lewis Lee’s Major Murder of Mueller Family
In January 1996, Lee along with Chevie Kehoe left the state of Washington and traveled to Arkansas and arrived at the home of William Frederick Mueller on January 11, 1996. Mueller was a gun dealer who possessed a large collection of weapons, ammunition, and cash. They entered Mueller’s home to find valuable property at the house in a police raid clothing, but the family wasn’t at home.
When the Muellers returned, Lee and Kehoe overpowered and incapacitated Mueller and his wife, Nancy Ann Mueller, and questioned Mueller’s 8-year-old stepdaughter, Sarah Elizabeth Powell, about the cash. After finding $50,000 in cash(equivalent to $81,509), guns, and ammunition, they shot each of the three victims with a stun gun. They then placed plastic bags over their heads with a duct tape and suffocated them to death. After then, they taped rocks to them and threw each family member into the swamp.
The bodies were discovered in Lake Dardanelle near Russellville, Arkansas, in late June 1996. A year later, on June 17, 1997, Kehoe was arrested in Cedar City, Utah.
Execution of Daniel Lewis Lee
After Kehoe was arrested, Lee was also caught and was directed by the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. to argue for a death sentence. Lee received a death sentence for three counts of murder in aid of racketeering however, Nancy Mueller’s mother, Earlene Branch Peterson, pleaded for clemency on behalf of Lee that the death sentence will just dirty her name.
After many appeals, in July 2004, the Eighth Circuit affirmed Lee’s conviction and death sentence on the merits. Lee was scheduled to be executed on December 9, 2019, and would have been the first inmate to be executed by the federal government since the execution of Louis Jones, Jr. in 2003 but it was stopped as the use of pentobarbital may violate the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994.
In April 2020, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated District Judge Chutkan’s injunction, and on June 29, 2020, the Supreme Court denied Lee’s petition for a writ of certiorari, with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting.
The execution date was set for July 13, 2020, but it was rescheduled after victims’ families asked that they wouldn’t be able to travel to witness the execution due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, in the early morning of July 14, 2020, the Supreme Court lifted the hold that Judge Chutkan previously implemented in a 5–4 decision that allowed the execution.
Lee was executed later that morning and when asked for a final statement, he denied committing the crime, stating, “I didn’t do it. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not a murderer. You’re killing an innocent man.”
Lee was pronounced dead at 8:07 a.m. after receiving a single-dose lethal injection of pentobarbital, becoming the first person to be executed by the United States federal government since the execution of Louis Jones, Jr. in 2003.
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