Only Native American on federal death row executed
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. • The only Native American on federal death row was put to death Wednesday, despite objections from many Navajo leaders who had urged President Donald Trump to halt the execution on the grounds it would violate tribal culture and sovereignty.
With the execution of Lezmond Mitchell for the grisly slayings of a 9-year-old and her grandmother, the federal government under the pro-death penalty president has now carried out more executions in 2020 than it had in the previous 56 years combined.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons confirmed Mitchell was pronounced dead at 4:29 p.m. MDT after receiving a lethal injection of pentobarbital inside the a small, pale-green death chamber at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.
Mitchell, who is now 38, and an accomplice were convicted of killing Tiffany Lee and 63-year-old Alyce Slim after the grandmother offered them a lift as they hitchhiked on the Navajo Nation in 2001. They stabbed Slim 33 times, slit Tiffany’s throat and stoned her to death. They later mutilated both bodies.
Tribal leaders’ bid to persuade Trump to commute Mitchell’s sentence to life in prison failed.
FILE — In this July 17, 2020, file photo the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind., is shown. Indiana State Police agreed Friday, Aug. 14, 2020 to stop blocking roads to the prison where federal executions resumed last month and are set to continue, backing down after anti-death penalty activists said in a lawsuit the roadblocks impeded their speech rights. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)