McVeigh is one of 20 prisoners now awaiting execution on the federal death row

July 13, 1999
Web posted at: 7:42 PM EDT (2342 GMT)

From CNN's Terry Frieden

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and the 19 other prisoners currently under federal death sentences were moved Tuesday to the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, site of the new federal execution chamber.

Justice Department officials say the Bureau of Prisons has completed converting an old cell block in the penitentiary to a new facility for condemned prisoners.

Until now, a federal death row did not physically exist. Prisoners under death sentences from federal courts were housed in state and federal penitentiaries in six different states.

McVeigh had been housed in the Administrative Maximum Security Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.

Other prisoners were transferred from Virginia, Texas, Arkansas, Illinois and Alabama.

No federal prisoner has been executed since 1963, when Victor Feguer was hanged in the Iowa State Penitentiary for slaying a victim of an interstate kidnapping.

Death penalty experts believe the next federal execution may occur before the end of 1999. David Ronald Chandler of Alabama was sentenced to death in a murder-for-hire plot under the drug kingpin statute.

"Chandler was convicted in 1991, and he's probably the first in line, because he's nearly exhausted his appeals," said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Executioners at the newly constructed federal death chamber will use lethal injections.

Since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, 558 state prisoners have been executed. Thirty-eight states have a death penalty.