United States v. Lee, No. 19-3618 (8th Cir. 2020)
Annotate this Case
After the district court granted defendant's motion to stay the execution, the execution date passed, and the government appealed. Defendant argued that the government's appeal is moot because the execution date has passed and the execution has not been rescheduled.
The Eighth Circuit held that there is a live controversy over the validity of the district court's ongoing injunction. Furthermore, that another district court also had enjoined defendant's execution on different grounds, does not preclude the government from appealing this order too. The court held that the district court applied the incorrect legal standard in relying on Chambers v. Bowersox, 197 F.3d 308 (8th Cir. 1999) (per curiam), to justify a stay of execution pending a decision by the Supreme Court in Banister v. Davis, No. 18-6943. Therefore, an appreciable chance that Banister could allow for additional judicial consideration of defendant's previously denied Rule 59(e) motion was not sufficient to justify a stay of execution. The court vacated the district court's order.
Court Description: [Colloton, Author, with Kelly and Erickson, Circuit Judges] Death Penalty - execution of sentence. After the district court issued a stay of execution and the execution date passed, the government pursued the appeal of the district court's order. Because the stay order extends until further order of court, the appeal is not moot. The district court applied an incorrect legal standard in relying on Chambers v. Bowersox to justify a stay of execution pending a decision by the Supreme Court in Banister v. Davis. An appreciable chance that Bannister could allow for additional judicial consideration of Lee's previously denied Rule 59(3) motion was not sufficient to justify a stay of execution. Accordingly the district court's stay order is vacated.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.