USA | Justice Department sets August execution date for only Native American on death row

Navajo Nation objects to the death sentence for tribe member convicted of double homicide

The Justice Department on Wednesday scheduled the execution of Lezmond Mitchell, the only Native American on federal death row, for late August, his attorneys said Wednesday.

If the execution, scheduled for August 26, proceeds, it will be the 1st time in modern American history the government executed a Native American tribal member.

Mitchell is a member of the Navajo Nation. Under federal law, the U.S. government cannot pursue a death sentence for a capital murder committed on Native American land without the tribe’s consent.

Justice Department prosecutors in the early 2000s got around that restriction, however, by seeking the death penalty connected to a lesser charge.

Mitchell’s attorneys, Jonathan Aminoff and Celeste Bacchi, accused Justice Department prosecutors of exploiting a legal loophole.

“The federal government’s announcement that it now plans to execute Lezmond Mitchell demonstrates the ultimate disrespect for the Navajo Nation’s values and sovereignty,” they said in a statement.

The Justice Department pushed back in a statement, saying that Mitchell’s conviction and death sentence were affirmed on appeal by “every court that considered them.”

Lezmond Mitchell is a 37-year-old Navajo man convicted of murdering Alyce Slim and Tiffany Lee, two Navajo people on Navajo reservation land in 2001. The Navajo Nation has consistently maintained its position against capital punishment generally and as applied to Mitchell. This case represents the only time in the history of modern capital punishment that the United States Government has sought the death penalty over the objection of a Native American tribe when the criminal conduct in question was committed on tribal land. More information about this case is here.

With the execution of Dustin Lee Honken at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, on July 16, the USA has now executed 1,522 condemned individuals since the death penalty was re-legalized on July 2, 1976 in the US Supreme Court Gregg v Georgia decision.

Gary Gilmore was the 1st person executed, in Utah, on January 17, 1977. Below is a list of further scheduled executions as the nation continues its shameful practice of state-sponsored killings.

NOTE: The list is likely to change over the coming months as new execution dates are added and possible stays of execution occur.

1525-----Sept. 9----------John Ramirez----------------Texas

1526-----Sept. 30---------Carlos Trevino---------------Texas

1523-----Aug. 26----------Lezmond Mitchell----------Federal

1524-----Aug. 28----------Keith Nelson-----------------Federal

UPDATE FROM DEATH PENALTY ACTION (July 29)

Sister Barbara Batista has just been visiting Kieth Nelson at the Federal death house in Terre Haute, where he is scheduled to be executed on August 28th. Sister Barbara had news: Lezmond Mitchell was moved to death watch today. His execution date has been set for August 26th. Death Penalty Action will be there.

Here's the thing. Petitioning the President has proven to be a waste of time. The federal death penalty is being used as a political tool by the Trump Administration and the campaign to re-elect Donald Trump. For this reason, Death Penalty Action is instead petitioning congress:

Click to sign The Petition Now!

YOU have already signed our previous petition to congress, however, we've redrafted it now that situations have changed. We urge you to consider the new language and add your name to endorse this new language:

The federal death penalty is being used as a political tool by the Trump Administration and the campaign to re-elect Donald Trump. The administration is ignoring the law, ignoring compelling issues which demand executive clemency, ignoring the danger of executing during the pandemic, and even ignoring the families of victims in several cases who adamantly oppose the execution of the person convicted of killing their loved ones. For this reason, petitioning the President has proven to be a waste of time.

Executions do not keep society any safer from dangerous offenders than incarceration. We can do much better for the families of murder victims than the hollow promise of a possible execution decades in the future.

We are urging Congress to abolish the federal death penalty.

Background:

In July, 2019 the Trump Administration announced its intent to resume federal executions, setting three execution dates in December 2019 and two more in January, 2020. Appeals postponed those executions for months, however three federal death row prisoners were executed on July 14, July 16, and July 17, 2020. These problematic executions were the first to be conducted by the federal government since 2003. Another two federal executions are scheduled for August 26 and 28, 2020.

Additionally, responding to a rash of mass shootings, the Trump Administration announced in 2019 that it will push for expedited executions for mass shooters who happen to survive their terror attacks. The president has also called for speeding up executions in cases of drug kingpins and for the murder of law enforcement officers. Donald Trump has long used the death penalty as a political tool.

Many problems exist with federal, military and state death penalty laws. These issues are explored in great detail, here. Death Penalty Action believes the death penalty is not necessary to be safe from dangerous offenders or to hold them accountable. In an era where support for capital punishment is waning and states are abolishing the punishment, calling for more executions is political rhetoric intended to win support from particular voting blocks.

Most alarming, evidence came to light after the July 14, 2020 execution of Daniel Lee that the campaign to reelect Donald Trump has guided the strategy and timing of this spate of federal executions. Read about this in the Terre Haute Tribune Star report. Further evidence is currently being developed.

Click to sign The Petition Now!

Source: Washington Times, Staff; Rick Halperin; Death Penalty Action, July 29, 2020

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Florida Set to Execute Man Who Said He Killed to Reach Death Row, Challenging Misconception that Death Penalty Deters Crime

Florida is scheduled to execute James Robertson at noon on Tuesday, October 13, at Florida State Prison. His execution remains scheduled despite the withdrawal of William Lee Thompson’s death warrant, which had called for a 2nd execution that evening. If completed, this will be Florida’s 17th execution of 2026. Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) and partners will be holding a series of vigils and demonstrations across the state.

Saudi Arabia executes two Bangladeshis over 'immoral act' inside mosque

Saudi Arabia has carried out the death penalty on two Bangladeshi nationals in Mecca. The country's Interior Ministry announced this in a statement on Wednesday. According to the report, they were sentenced over allegations of involvement in immoral acts inside a mosque in Mecca. The information was reported by Ajel News, citing the Saudi Interior Ministry's statement. The two Bangladeshis executed were a man and a woman, Nazrul Islam Abdul Basir and Sithi Akhter. The “immoral acts” referred to illicit heterosexual intercourse, not homosexual activity.

Florida executes James Robertson

STARKE, Fla. — A Florida prisoner who said he killed his cellmate specifically to get on death row was executed Tuesday, nearly 18 years after the attack. James Robertson, 63, declined to offer any last words before receiving a three-drug injection and was pronounced dead about 10 minutes later. It was a stark contrast to the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee two weeks ago, where she was rushed to the hospital after surviving two lethal doses of pentobarbital.

Christa Pike: 4 Major Questions As She Returns to Death Row

As Christa Pike returns to death row after surviving Tennessee’s attempt to execute her, several questions remain about her case and what comes next. Pike, 50, was discharged from hospital and moved back to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, the women’s prison where she was housed for 30 years, her attorneys said on Saturday. She was hospitalized after surviving 2 doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital as Tennessee attempted to execute her on September 30. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her classmate at a Job Corps training program in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pike was 18 at the time.

Christa Pike's Survival Wasn't a Miracle. That's What Should Scare Us.

What happened in Tennessee's execution chamber is one of the most common failures in medicine Christa Pike is awake. A week after Tennessee strapped her to a gurney and gave her two doses of pentobarbital , she is off the ventilator and speaking from a hospital bed, still shackled to it. Her lawyers call her recovery " medically unprecedented. " Legal scholars say she is the first person in American history to survive a lethal injection after the drug was actually given. I understand the impulse to make such claims. I consulted for Pike's legal team, but I have also spent three decades in operating rooms and intensive care units (ICUs), and I want to resist the word "unprecedented" and the word "miracle" that hovers just behind it.

Florida | Former firefighter, police officer sentenced to death in Fort Pierce killing

Otto Lenke, a Sebastian resident and former Indian River County firefighter/paramedic, as well as a former Melbourne police officer, was convicted in May 2026 of first-degree murder with a firearm and first-degree arson for the February 2021 killing of Richard Benson, owner of Fast Frank’s Cycle Concepts in Fort Pierce. SEBASTIAN—A Nineteen Judicial Circuit judge on Tuesday sentenced former Indian River County firefighter and Melbourne police officer Otto Lenke of Sebastian to death for the 2021 killing of a Fort Pierce motorcycle shop owner.

Buffalo Tops shooter files last-minute bid to avoid death penalty

Payton Gendron, who is already serving life without parole for killing 10 Black people in a racist mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022, is asking a federal judge to throw out the case that could send him to death row. Defense attorneys filed the motion Monday — a day before jury selection was scheduled to begin — seeking to dismiss Gendron’s federal indictment. They argued that Black residents are underrepresented in the jury pool for New York’s Western District, according to WIVB and WKBW.

Florida | William Reaves set to be executed on Oct. 20 at 6 p.m.

With his execution date looming, convicted killer William Reaves will soon be moved from Raiford's Union Correctional Institution to a death watch cell in nearby Florida State Prison, a maximum-security complex also known as "The Rock." Reaves, 77, a former Gifford resident in Indian River County who’s been on death row for 38 years, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Oct. 20 at 6 p.m. His execution will fulfill a sentence of death imposed for the 1986 fatal shooting of Indian River County Sheriff’s Cpl. Richard “Raz” Raczkoski outside a Zippy Mart store on State Road 60 west of Vero Beach.

USA | Firing squad execution to be livestreamed, Pentagon says

The public will be able to watch the execution of a former US Army major by firing squad, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said. A Defense Department official told the BBC the execution of Nidal Hasan, who shot dead 13 unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, would be livestreamed. It is believed it would be the first public execution in the US in almost a century. The decision to livestream it is "unprecedented in the modern era" and "on uncertain legal terrain", said John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death.

What Tennessee wants to do next to Christa Pike is beyond grim

Christa Pike, the woman who survived two execution attempts in Tennessee earlier this week, remains hospitalized in critical condition, where presumably medical staff is at work trying to keep her alive. If she wakes from the coma she had entered, Tennessee officials want to start anew to inject lethal drugs into her seemingly too-small veins to kill her and carry out the state death warrant. Pike also is being treated for “significant injuries to both arms” sustained when two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her. If she dies, there will be no need to try again. As we know by now, Tennessee tried to put Pike to death Wednesday night by lethal injection for a murder she committed when she was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in the state in 200 years.

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