SCOTUS, by 5-4 vote, vacates new injunction that had been blocking scheduled federal executions ... UPDATE: execution of Daniel Lewis Lee now completed

As noted in this post yesterday, a DC District Court in the morning had entered an order blocking yesterday scheduled federal execution as well as the others planned for this week. That ruling stayed in place through a DC Circuit appeal. But at around 2am this morning, the US Supreme Court decided in this per curiam opinion to "vacate the District Court’s preliminary injunction so that the plaintiffs’ executions may proceed as planned." This AP article provides context and more details:

The Trump administration was moving ahead early Tuesday with the execution of the first federal prison inmate in 17 years after a divided Supreme Court reversed lower courts and ruled federal executions could proceed.

Daniel Lewis Lee had been scheduled to receive a lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital at 4 p.m. EDT Monday.  But a court order issued Monday morning by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan prevented Lee’s execution.  A federal appeals court in Washington refused the administration’s plea to step in, leaving the hold in place, before the Supreme Court acted by a 5-4 vote.  Still, Lee’s lawyers insisted the execution could not go forward after midnight under federal regulations.  With conservatives in the majority, the court said in an unsigned opinion that the prisoners’ “executions may proceed as planned.” The four liberal justices dissented.

Lee’s execution was scheduled for about 4 a.m. EDT Tuesday, according to court papers. There was another delay when the government asked for an emergency ruling related to an old stay that had been issued in the case, but that wasn’t expected to derail the execution. The Bureau of Prisons had continued with preparations even as lower courts paused the proceedings....

Lee was convicted in Arkansas of the 1996 killings of gun dealer William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell. “The government has been trying to plow forward with these executions despite many unanswered questions about the legality of its new execution protocol,” said Shawn Nolan, one of the attorneys for the men facing federal execution.

The decision to move forward during a global health pandemic that has killed more than 135,000 people in the United States and is ravaging prisons nationwide, drew scrutiny from civil rights groups as well as family of Lee’s victims.

Some members of the victims’ family argued they would be put at high risk for the coronavirus if they had to travel to attend, and sought to delay the execution until it was safer to travel. Those claims were at first granted but also eventually overturned by the Supreme Court. [NOTE: It was the Seventh Circuit that overturned these claims, but SCOTUS upheld that decision.]

Critics argue that the government is creating an unnecessary and manufactured urgency for political gain. The developments are also likely to add a new front to the national conversation about criminal justice reform in the lead-up to the 2020 elections.

Two more executions are scheduled this week, though one, Wesley Ira Purkey, was on hold in a separate legal claim. Dustin Lee Honken’s execution was scheduled for on Friday. A fourth man, Keith Dwayne Nelson, is scheduled to be executed in August.

In an interview with The Associated Press last week, Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department has a duty to carry out the sentences imposed by the courts, including the death penalty, and to bring a sense of closure to the victims and those in the communities where the killings happened.

But relatives of those killed by Lee strongly oppose that idea. They wanted to be present to counter any contention that it was being done on their behalf. “For us it is a matter of being there and saying, `This is not being done in our name; we do not want this,’” said relative Monica Veillette....

Executions on the federal level have been rare and the government has put to death only three defendants since restoring the federal death penalty in 1988 — most recently in 2003, when Louis Jones was executed for the 1995 kidnapping, rape and murder of a young female soldier. In 2014, following a botched state execution in Oklahoma, President Barack Obama directed the Justice Department to conduct a broad review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs. The attorney general said last July that the Obama-era review had been completed, clearing the way for executions to resume.

The Supreme Court's per curiam opinion runs three pages, and separate dissents by Justice Breyer and Justice Sotomayor are of similar lengthy and hit their usual notes of complaint about the death penalty. And Justice Breyer's dissent seemed resigned to a particular outcome, as its first sentence states plainly: "Today, for the first time in 17 years, the Federal Government will execute an inmate, Daniel Lewis Lee."

Notably, though the AP report suggested that the Lee execution was still to go forward in the early hours of this morning, as of this writing (just after 8 am on July 14) there is no report that the execution has been completed.

Prior recent related posts:

• With executions looming, lots of news and notes about the federal death penalty 
• Seventh Circuit panel vacates stay to put federal execution back on schedule for July 13
• DC District Judge issues new stay, based on Eighth Amemdment claims, to block this week's scheduled federal executions

UPDATE: I suppose I should have waited a few minutes to complete this post, as this Fox News piece now has this updated headline: "Daniel Lewis Lee executed for torturing, killing Arkansas family in 1996, first federal execution 17 years." Here is the start of the piece:

A white supremacist who tortured and killed an Arkansas family-- including an 8-year-old girl-- was executed early Tuesday morning in Indiana. Daniel Lewis Lee, 47, was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 8:07 a.m., just hours after the Supreme Court greenlighted the first federal execution to take place since 2003.