Witnesses to the Execution

The federal government had executed just three men in the last half century — until July, when it executed three in a single week. President Trump has long extolled the death penalty, and last month, Attorney General William Barr set dates for four men. “We owe it to the victims of these horrific crimes, and to the families left behind, to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system,” Barr said in a statement.

The first man on Barr’s list was Daniel Lewis Lee, who was convicted of helping to kill William Mueller, Nancy Mueller, and Nancy’s 8-year-old daughter Sarah Powell, in 1996. According to prosecutors, the three were shot with a stun gun and then drowned during a robbery by members of a white supremacist group. Several of Nancy and Sarah’s relatives opposed Lee’s execution, but wanted to attend. Feeling they could not travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they unsuccessfully sued to stop it. In the end, they did not witness Lee’s death, but William Mueller’s son, Scott Mueller, did attend.

Lee’s death was scheduled for 4 p.m., on Monday, July 13, but legal fights over the government’s lethal injection plan continued into the night, and his time of death was 8:07 a.m., on Tuesday. According to the federal Bureau of Prisons, Lee spent four hours strapped to the gurney.

We tracked down a broad array of those connected to the event, to present a three-dimensional account of the first federal execution in 17 years.

Monica Veillette, niece and cousin of murder victims Nancy Mueller and Sarah Powell: When they announced the new execution date, we thought it was likely a mistake, that someone had not considered how many people would need to travel during a pandemic. Someone called from the Bureau of Prisons to set up our plane tickets and hotels; they handle everything from the minute you arrive.

I kept asking him about COVID precautions and he said he’d get answers. He said that he and his wife were scared even