Kansas girl's killer 5th federal inmate executed this year

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — A Kansas girl’s killer Friday became the fifth federal inmate put to death this year, an execution that went forward only after a higher court tossed a ruling that would have required the government to get a prescription for the drug used to kill him.

Questions about whether the drug pentobarbital causes pain prior to death had been a focus of appeals for Keith Nelson, 45, the second inmate executed this week in the Trump administration’s resumption of federal executions this summer after a 17-year hiatus.

The Bureau of Prisons gave the time of Nelson’s death inside a death chamber at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, as 4:32 p.m. EDT.

Nelson was convicted of grabbing 10-year-old Pamela Butler off the street and throwing her into his truck in broad daylight on Oct. 12, 1999, as part of a plan to find a female to kidnap, torture, rape and kill because he expected to go back to prison anyway.

The girl had been returning to her Kansas City, Kansas, home on inline skates after buying cookies. As he drove off with her, he made a rude gesture to her sister, who saw the attack and screamed. He later raped the fifth-grader and strangled her with a wire.

Nelson, like the other federal inmates executed this year, received a lethal injection of pentobarbital, which depresses the central nervous system and eventually stops the heart.

Nelson's attorneys said they had come to know him as someone other than a killer, that they “saw his humanity, his compassion, and his sense of humor.”

“The execution of Keith Nelson did not make the world a safer place," the lawyers, Dale Baich and Jen Moreno, said in a statement. “Keith’s death sentence was the result of a proceeding that denied him constitutionally guaranteed protections and...