Judge rejects new trials for white supremacists

A federal judge has declined to grant new trials to a pair of white supremacists found guilty of the 1996 robbery and murders of an Arkansas family.

U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele issued two opinions Thursday rejecting post-conviction relief for convicted murderers Chevie Kehoe of Colville, Wash., and Danny Lee.

Kehoe's argument for a new trial included, among other claims, ineffective assistance of counsel and denial of his constitutional rights. Lee had argued for a new trial because he claimed that the death penalty was applied in error and because of newly discovered evidence.

After a two-month trial, Lee and Kehoe were convicted in May 1999 of capital murder, racketeering and conspiracy in what prosecutors said was a plan to overthrow the federal government and set up a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest.

The two were found guilty of the murders of Tilly gun dealer William Mueller, his wife Nancy, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell. Their bodies were found in a backwater of Illinois Bayou north of Russellville.

Lee, of Yukon, Okla., was sentenced to death; Kehoe, the alleged ring leader, was given a life sentence.

In his ruling on Lee's request for a new trial, Eisele again rapped the U.S. attorney general for pursuing the death penalty against Lee. After Kehoe was given a life sentence, government lawyers said they would not seek the death penalty for Lee, as had been planned. But they decided to pursue their original plans after consulting with then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder.

Eisele later ruled that he was wrong to allow the government to seek the death penalty on the authority of a deputy attorney general instead of the attorney general. A federal appeals court, however, upheld Lee's death sentence.

"While this court may agree ... that Deputy Attorney General Holder's decision to require the government to continue to seek the death penalty against Lee was unreasonable, unfair, and possibly even an abuse of prosecutorial discretion, the question is whether that decision violated the Constitution," Eisele wrote in Thursday's ruling. "The court concludes that it did not."