Death Penalty News

Keith Dwayne Nelson was executed by lethal injection at 4:32 p.m. today at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute. A Kansas girl's killer Friday became the fifth federal inmate put to death this year, an execution that went forward only after a higher court tossed a ruling that would have required the government to get a prescription for the drug used to kill him. Questions about whether the drug pentobarbital causes pain prior to death had been a focus of appeals for Keith Nelson, 45, the second inmate executed this week in the Trump administration's resumption of federal executions this summer after a 17-year hiatus. Nelson, who displayed no outward signs of pain or distress during the execution, was pronounced dead at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, at 4:32 p.m. EDT — about nine minutes after the execution began Inside the execution room with Nelson, 45, were individuals identified as a U.S. Marshal, 2 Bureau of Prisons officials, and spiritual advis...

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. RELATED |  Trump and Barr Are on a Capital Punishment Killing Spree 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. Asked by a prison official if he had any last words for victims’ family members and other witnesses behind glass at the death chamber, Mitchell casually responded, “No, I’m good.” Moments later, prison officials began the lethal injection of pentobarbital inside the small, pale-green death chamber at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Mitchell lay flat on his back, his glasses still on and a medical ma...

The execution of the only Native American prisoner on federal death row was all but certain Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his last-minute appeal. Lawyers for Lezmond Mitchell, a member of the Navajo Nation who was convicted in the brutal killings of an Arizona woman and her granddaughter nearly two decades ago, had asked Justice Elena Kagan to halt his execution until President Trump and the Department of Justice had more time to consider his clemency petition. Mitchell’s attorneys, the Navajo government and death penalty opponents have asked Trump to spare the 38-year-old’s life on the grounds his execution would violate the tribe’s sovereignty and cultural beliefs. But the court appeared to dismiss those concerns, issuing a brief statement late Tuesday night that essentially gives the green light for the Department of Justice to execute him Wednesday evening in Indiana. Unless the Trump administration or a lower court intervenes in the case, Mitche...

Mitchell, the only Native American on federal death row, is scheduled to die on August 26. But his case raises red flags. WHEN JOHN FONTES found out that his former student Lezmond Mitchell had been involved in a grisly double murder in the fall of 2001, he could not believe what he was hearing. At the Rough Rock Community School in Chinle, Arizona, where he was the vocational director — and where Mitchell had graduated just one year earlier — Fontes had been struck by his growth and potential. Yet the details of Mitchell’s crime were “horrible, beyond comprehension,” Fontes recalled. “When I first heard of it, I was in disbelief.” Mitchell had just turned 20 when he was arrested alongside a teenager named Johnny Oslinger for the gruesome killings of a 63-year-old woman named Alyce Slim and her 9-year-old granddaughter, Tiffany Lee. The young men and their victims were all Navajo; Slim had been taking her granddaughter to see a medicine man in New Mexico when they were attacke...

On the eve of an Arizona man's scheduled death, a small group of demonstrators gathered in Phoenix on Tuesday to oppose the first federal execution of a Native American in modern history. Lezmond Mitchell, 38, is a member of the Navajo Nation. He is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday evening at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.  He was convicted of killing Alyce Slim, 63, and her granddaughter Tiffany Lee, 9, in 2001.  "It's a question of sovereignty," said Dan Peitzmeyer, spokesman for Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona. "It is another slap in the face of Indigenous people and another promise broken."  The Navajo Nation has consistently objected to the federal government pursuing the death penalty against Mitchell. According to Mitchell's lawyers, his case is the only time in modern history the federal government has sought the death penalty over the objection of a tribe when the...

CHICAGO (AP) — The only Native American on federal death row is set to die Wednesday for the slayings of a 9-year-old and her grandmother nearly two decades ago, though many Navajos are hoping for last-minute intervention by President Donald Trump to halt the execution. If Lezmond Mitchell is put to death on schedule and becomes the fourth federal inmate executed this year, the federal government under the pro-death penalty president will have carried out more executions in 2020 than in the previous 56 years combined. Mitchell, 38, and an accomplice were convicted of killing Tiffany Lee and 63-year-old Alyce Slim, who had offered them a lift in her pickup truck as they hitchhiked on the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona in 2001. They stabbed Slim 33 times, slit Tiffany’s throat and stoned her to death. They later mutilated both bodies. The Navajo government asked Trump to commute Mitchell’s sentence on grounds his execution would violate Navajo culture and sovereignt...

In 1991, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called on the church to be “alert and active regarding federal policies which... undermine Native American lives, dignity, and rights.” One effort to devalue the dignity of Native Americans is unfolding right now, as the federal government plans the execution of Lezmond Mitchell, the only Native American on federal death row.  Mr. Mitchell, who is Navajo, is scheduled to be executed on Aug. 26, over the objections of the Navajo Nation, for a crime committed against Navajo citizens on Navajo land. As Catholics, we uphold that the dignity of the human person is God-given and inviolable. It is this belief that leads us to oppose the death penalty in all cases and work for its abolition worldwide in accordance with Pope Francis’ revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2018. But ours is not the only tradition which espouses this hallowed tenet. Navajo culture, too, professes the sanctity of life, a teaching which un...