First Federal Execution Since 1963 Scheduled

The federal government will execute an inmate March 30 for the first time in 32 years, the Bureau of Prisons announced Monday.

The condemned man is David Ronald Chandler, 42, a drug kingpin convicted of hiring another man to murder a police informant.

Chandler, head of an Alabama marijuana growing and distribution organization, is to be given a lethal injection at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind.

On May 14, 1991, he became the first federal defendant sentenced to death under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, which makes killings related to a continuing criminal enterprise a capital offense. Five other federal inmates have since been sentenced under the act.

The last person executed by the federal government was Victor Feuger, who was hanged in Iowa in 1963 for murder and kidnaping.

Federal and state death sentences had been halted in 1972 by the Supreme Court. Death penalty laws had to be rewritten with stricter standards before executions could resume.

Chandler was convicted of promising Charles Ray Jarrell $500 to kill Marlin Earl Shuler, a member of Chandler’s operation who had become a police informant. Jarrell fatally shot Shuler in Piedmont, Ala., on May 8, 1990, but he said he never collected the $500. Jarrell was the key witness in Chandler’s trial. For his cooperation, Jarrell was allowed to plead guilty to drug conspiracy and was sentenced to 25 years.

Chandler also was convicted of drug conspiracy, participation in a continuing criminal enterprise, money laundering and a firearms offense. The Supreme Court refused to hear Chandler’s appeal.

The Bureau of Prisons said Chandler could mount appeals on other issues and a court might then stay his execution. The Supreme Court, however, has stiffer criteria for accepting collateral appeals than it does for appeals directly challenging the original verdict.