Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) strapped
Daniel Lewis Lee to an execution gurney in the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. With the execution chamber curtains closed, correctional officials left him there for four hours while federal prosecutors filed pleadings in a federal appeals court to lift a stay of execution they had forgotten was still in effect. When the stay was lifted at 6:36 a.m., without notifying Lee’s counsel, the BOP commenced the execution, injecting him with a fatal dose of the drug pentobarbital. He was pronounced dead at 7:07 a.m. Central time.
When Lee’s lawyer,