After 17 years the U.S. government carried out its first execution, that's what crime was committed.

The execution of prisoners Daniel Lewis Lee was carried out after the Supreme Court's decision early Tuesday morning that overturned the order of a lower court for three executions scheduled for this week and another scheduled for next month.

Lee was executed with a powerful, pentobarbital dose in a federal prison in Indiana, just hours after the court announced the verdict.

He had been convicted of killing a three-member family, including an 8-year-old girl, in 1996.

Lee was to be executed on Monday, but hours before that happened, a federal judge issued a preliminary order indicating that courts should be allowed more time to consider whether the method of execution violated constitutional safeguards against cruel and unusual sentences.

Lawyers argued that pentobarbital can cause some sort of respiratory stress with the feeling of drowning.

Most of the Supreme Court (5-4) dismissed this argument, saying that the pentobarbilital had been approved by states carrying out their executions and that more than 100 people were executed in this way, without any incident.

The government has brought expert evidence, where it has shown that pulmonary edemes occur only after the prisoner has died or completely lost his feelings”, written in the majority's opinion. “ ”

Judges Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, expressed in the minority's opinion that the majority had rushed to review the issue.

Today's “Decision illustrates how serious the consequences of such accelerated decision-making can be,” said Judge Kagan.

Judge Stephen Brayer, who was joined by Judge Ginsburg, said that the Supreme Court may have to examine the constitutionality of the death penalty on its own.

The execution of Wesley Ira Purkey was scheduled for Wednesday, followed by the execution of Dustin Lee Honken on Friday. Keith Denay Nelson is scheduled to be executed on August 28th.

Since the restoration of the death penalty in 1988, the federal government had so far executed three persons in 2003.