(Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge issued an injunction on Monday stopping what would have been the first federal execution in 17 years from being carried out later in the day in order to allow legal challenges against the government’s lethal-injection protocol to continue.
Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. district court in Washington ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to delay the executions of Daniel Lewis Lee, Wesley Ira Purkey, Dustin Lee Honken, and Keith Dwayne Nelson until further order of the court.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
