Yukon man gets death sentence

The Associated Press/May 15, 2002

Little Rock, Ark. -- Three years after his conviction, a white supremacist from Oklahoma has been sentenced to die for the murders of three members of an Arkansas family.

U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele sentenced Danny Lee to death Monday for the slayings.

The judge also sentenced the Yukon man to two life sentences for racketeering and conspiracy in what prosecutors say was a plot to overthrow the government and create a whites- only nation in the Pacific Northwest.

A jury recommended the death sentence after Lee's conviction in May 1999. However, the judge delayed sentencing while considering whether the prosecution should have abandoned its pursuit of the death penalty after the jury recommended life sentences for co- defendant Chevie Kehoe.

Eisele later ruled 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.

Also Monday, Eisele denied a new trial for Kehoe, the alleged mastermind of the plot.

Kehoe, of Colville, Wash., and Lee were convicted in the 1996 murders of a Pope County family.