Cult leader loses execution appeal

Irish Examiner/October 24, 2006

A US cult leader sentenced to death for killing a family of five was scheduled to be executed today after losing one of his final appeals.

His lawyer, James Jenkins, planned to file a last-minute appeal with the US Supreme Court, but said the situation looked grim.

Jeffrey Lundgren was convicted of shooting to death the family, including three children, while they stood in a pit dug inside his barn in north-eastern Ohio.

The family had moved from Missouri in 1987 to follow the cult leader’s teachings.

Lundgren formed a cult after he was dismissed in 1987 as a lay minister of the Reorganised Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now known as the Community of Christ.

Several people had moved with him to a rented farmhouse near Cleveland, where they called him “Dad” and contributed money for group expenses.

Lundgren said passages in the Bible told him to kill the family, and witnesses said the family was not as enthusiastic about the cult as Lundgren would have liked.

Yesterday, the sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati handed down a decision that cleared the way for his execution today.

The three-judge appeals panel voted 2-1 to reverse an order that would have delayed the execution to allow Lundgren to join a lawsuit challenging Ohio’s use of lethal injection. The judges in the majority gave no explanation for the ruling.

“I’m floored. I can’t believe it. There’s no reason for it,” Jenkins said of the appeals ruling. “It blows my mind that they lifted the stay at the 11th hour as they have. I’m flabbergasted.”

The Cleveland lawyer said he hadn’t thought of any other options and believed an appeal to the US Supreme Court was Lundgren’s last chance to avoid execution.

“It’s not looking good though,” he said.

The 2004 lethal injection lawsuit argues that the method used to administer the injection is painful enough to amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

Lundgren contends he is at even greater risk of experiencing pain and suffering because he is overweight and diabetic.

Lundgren’s case had been transferred yesterday to the same three-judge panel that was considering the lethal injection lawsuit.

The state yesterday prepared for the execution, moving Lundgren from death row at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, which houses Ohio’s death chamber.

State prisons spokeswoman Andrea Dean said Lundgren had access to a television and spent yesterday reading his Bible and meeting with the prison system’s administrator of religious services.