Victims’ Family Members Ask for Clemency for Federal Death-Row Prisoner Daniel Lee

When Attorney General William Barr announced in July 2019 that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment planned to exe­cute five pris­on­ers in a five-week span from December 9, 2019 to January 15, 2020, he declared that ​“we owe it to the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies to car­ry for­ward the sen­tence imposed by our jus­tice sys­tem.” In at least two of those cas­es, how­ev­er, the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ty have said they don’t want the death penal­ty carried out.

In a six-minute video, Earlene Branch Peterson (pic­tured, hold­ing a pho­to of her daugh­ter, Nancy Mueller) has asked President Donald Trump to grant clemen­cy for Daniel Lewis Lee, who is sched­uled to die on December 9 for the mur­ders of Peterson’s daugh­ter, son-in-law, and grand­daugh­ter. She is joined in her plea by a sur­viv­ing daugh­ter, Kimma Gurel, and grand­daugh­ter, Monica Veillette, as well as the U.S. attor­ney who inves­ti­gat­ed and pros­e­cut­ed the mur­ders and the tri­al judge who presided over the case. 

Lee and co-defen­dant Chevie Kehoe were con­vict­ed in 1999 of killing Nancy Mueller, her hus­band William Mueller, and her 8‑year-old daugh­ter Sarah Powell. Mueller’s fam­i­ly, the pros­e­cu­tor, and the judge all believe that exe­cut­ing Lee, who is sched­uled to be the first fed­er­al pris­on­er put to death in 16 years, would be a mis­car­riage of jus­tice giv­en the life sen­tence imposed on his much more cul­pa­ble co-defen­dant. Judge G. Thomas Eisele described Kehoe as the ​“ring­leader” and tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny showed that Kehoe killed Sarah Powell after Lee refused, say­ing he would not kill a child. 

In ask­ing President Trump to com­mute Lee’s death sen­tence to life with­out parole, Peterson says, ​“Yes, Daniel Lee dam­aged my life, but I can’t believe tak­ing his life is going to change any of that. I can’t see how exe­cut­ing Daniel Lee will hon­or my daugh­ter in any way. In fact, it’s kind of like it dirt­ies her name, because she wouldn’t want it and I don’t want it. That’s not the way it should be. That’s not the God I serve.” Peterson, who vot­ed for President Trump and said she would do so again in 2020, believes “[i]f I could talk per­son­al­ly to President Trump, I feel he could feel my heart and know that I don’t want this to hap­pen, that Daniel Lee doesn’t need this any more than Chevie Kehoe does. I believe that he should give Daniel Lee clemen­cy for what he did.” 

“The gov­ern­ment ain’t doing this for me,” she says, ​“because I would say no.”

On October 4, a fed­er­al appeals court grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to Lezmond Mitchell, the sec­ond of the five fed­er­al pris­on­ers on the Department of Justice’s exe­cu­tion sched­ule. Before Mitchell’s tri­al, Navajo Nation offi­cials wrote a let­ter to the fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor oppos­ing the death penal­ty for Mitchell, who is Navajo, say­ing that the ​“the tak­ing of human life for vengeance” is counter to Navajo cul­ture and reli­gion. Family mem­bers also opposed the pros­e­cu­tion seek­ing the death penal­ty in that case.

In 2014, both Judge Eisele and Dan Stripling, the lead pros­e­cu­tor at the tri­al, wrote let­ters to then-Attorney General Eric Holder express­ing their views that Lee’s death sen­tence was dis­pro­por­tion­ate and unfair. ​“I feel com­pelled to write this let­ter, which I would not nor­mal­ly do, because I believe that requir­ing Lee to pay the ulti­mate penal­ty – death ­– is unjust under the pecu­liar cir­cum­stances of this case,” Judge Eisele said. Stripling wrote to Holder, ​“I find very dis­turb­ing the ran­dom­ness with which defen­dants are charged, con­vict­ed, and sen­tenced in cap­i­tal cas­es. This case per­fect­ly illus­trates this unexplainable randomness.”

Eisele and Stripling not­ed that pros­e­cu­tors had planned to with­draw the death penal­ty as an option for Lee if the jury returned a life ver­dict for Kehoe. ​“There was agree­ment that should Kehoe not receive a death sen­tence, none should be sought against Lee,” Stripling stat­ed. When the jury rec­om­mend­ed a life sen­tence for Kehoe, pros­e­cu­tors asked the Department of Justice to decer­ti­fy the deci­sion to seek death for Lee. The request was denied. ​“At the time, and today, I think decer­ti­fi­ca­tion would have been the cor­rect deci­sion,” Stripling said. Judge Eisele wrote, ​“the end result leaves me with the firm con­vic­tion that jus­tice was not served in this particular case.”