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The United States is ready to execute Lezmond Mitchell, a convicted assassin and the one Native American on federal demise row, on Wednesday, regardless of opposition from the Navajo Nation, which says the federal government is infringing tribal sovereignty.
Mitchell, a Navajo, is ready to be killed with deadly injections of pentobarbital, a strong barbiturate, at 6 p.m. within the Department of Justice’s execution chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana.
His legal professionals and Jonathan Nez, the Navajo Nation president, have requested U.S. President Donald Trump for clemency, and Mitchell has requested the U.S. District Court in Washington to delay the execution whereas that is thought-about.
On Tuesday night time, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his bid for a keep primarily based on his legal professionals’ argument that racial bias might have tainted the jury at his trial.
Absent intervention, Mitchell, 38, will change into the fourth man to be executed by the U.S. authorities this summer season after a casual 17-year hiatus, which was precipitated partly by authorized challenges to deadly injection protocols and difficulties acquiring lethal medication.
Mitchell and an confederate, Johnny Oslinger, had been convicted of murdering a 9-year-old Navajo lady, Tiffany Lee, and her grandmother Alyce Slim in 2001 on the tribe’s territory, which spans 4 states within the U.S. Southwest.
According to prosecutors, the boys stabbed Slim greater than 30 instances, put the physique within the backseat of her automobile alongside the granddaughter as they drove elsewhere earlier than killing the lady later and decapitating each our bodies.
Mitchell was sentenced to demise in an Arizona federal courtroom over the objection of Navajo officers, who mentioned the tribe’s cultural values prohibited taking human life “for vengeance.” At least 13 different tribes joined the Navajo Nation in urging Trump this month to commute Mitchell’s sentence to life in jail.
Oslinger was a young person on the time and ineligible for the demise sentence.
Under the Major Crimes Act, the federal authorities has jurisdiction over sure main crimes occurring on Indian territory, together with homicide however often can’t pursue capital punishment for a Native American for a criminal offense on tribal land with out the tribe’s consent.
Navajo officers, together with different leaders of different tribes, have opposed the demise penalty, together with in Mitchell’s case. But John Ashcroft, legal professional normal underneath then-President George W. Bush, overrode federal prosecutors in Arizona who mentioned they might defer to the tribe’s place towards pursuing a capital case.
In what Mitchell’s legal professionals deride as a authorized loophole, federal prosecutors efficiently pursued a capital case towards Mitchell for carjacking, a capital crime that isn’t amongst these listed within the Major Crimes Act.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
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