47-year-old Daniel Lewis Lee from Oklahoma died by lethal injection hours after the Supreme Court cleared the way with a 5-4 vote.
White supremacist Lee was convicted of the 1996 murders of gun dealer William Mueller, his wife Nancy, and their 8-year-old daughter, Sarah.
Moments before he was executed by lethal injection, he said: “I didn’t do it.”
He added: “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not a murderer… You’re killing an innocent man.”
The execution has drawn scrutiny from the victims’ family who had sued to halt it and civil rights groups.
Two other prisoners are scheduled to be executed this month and a third inmate in August.
Shawn Nolan, one of the attorneys for the prisoners facing execution, said: “The government has been trying to plow forward with these executions despite many unanswered questions about the legality of its new execution protocol.”
Relatives of Mueller’s family strongly opposed the idea of federal execution and argued that Lee should get a life behind bars.
“For us it is a matter of being there and saying, ‘This is not being done in our name; we do not want this’,” one relative said.
They also said that the reputed ringleader and Lee’s co-defendant, Chevie Kehoe, received a sentence of life in prison.
It was in 1995 when Kehoe recruited Lee to join his white supremacist organization called the Aryan Peoples’ Republic.
Two years later, Lee and Kehoe were arrested for the killings of the family of three in Arkansas.
According to court documents, the culprits dressed in police raid attire and waited for Mueller in his home. When the family arrived, the two overpowered Mueller and Nancy before interrogating 8-year-old Sarah about where they could find guns and cash.
Lee and Kehoe took guns and ammunition and $50,000.
After torturing the family, prosecutors said Lee covered the victims’ heads with plastic bags and threw the bodies into the Illinois Bayou, where the remains were discovered five months later.
Kehoe is imprisoned in Florence High Penitentiary and was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences while Lee remained on death row.
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Replaced!