First federal execution in 17 years carried out in Indiana after Supreme Court cleared way

carried out the first federal execution in 17 years at a prison in Indiana after a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling cleared the way.

“I didn’t do it,” Lee said before he was executed.

His execution, the first by the federal Bureau of Prisons since 2003, was initially halted Friday over concerns about the coronavirus pandemic, which were raised by civil rights groups and relatives of Lee’s victims who had sued to try to stop it.

Lee's attorney, Ruth Friedman, said in a statement that he was executed "a mere 31 minutes after a court of appeals lifted the last impediment to his execution at the federal government's urging, while multiple motions remained pending, and without notice to counsel.".

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," said Friedman, director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project.

Prior to his execution, Lee had been allowed social visitors and meetings with his spiritual adviser and had been able to receive mail, prison officials said, according to NBC affiliate WTWO in Terre Haute

He was in the execution chamber with two men whom the Bureau of Prisons would only identify as “senior BOP officials,” a U.S

Marshal and Lee's spiritual adviser, whom a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson described as an “Appalachian pagan minister.”