US Executes Only Native American on Federal Death Row

The United States executed the only Native American on federal death row on Wednesday over the opposition of the Navajo Nation, which accuses the government of violating tribal sovereignty.

Lezmond Mitchell, a 38-year-old Navajo and convicted murderer, was pronounced dead at 6:29 p.m. EDT (2229 GMT) in the ⚖️Department of Justice’s execution chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, the department said.

His death was declared 26 minutes after department executioners began injecting him with pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate, according to a media witness.

He was the fourth man to be executed by the U.S. government this summer after an informal 17-year-hiatus was ended under President Donald Trump, which had been caused in part by legal challenges to lethal injection protocols and difficulties obtaining deadly drugs. Prior to July, there had only been three federal executions since 1963, all between 2001 and 2003.

Mitchell’s lawyers and Jonathan Nez, the Navajo Nation president, had asked Trump, a longtime advocate of capital punishment for serious crimes, for clemency.

On Tuesday night, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Mitchell’s bid for a stay based on his lawyers’ argument that racial bias may have tainted the jury at his trial.

Mitchell and an accomplice, Johnny Oslinger, were convicted of murdering a 9-year-old Navajo girl, Tiffany Lee, and her grandmother Alyce Slim in 2001 on the tribe’s territory, which spans four states in the U.S. Southwest.

According to prosecutors, the men had been hitchhiking before they stabbed Slim more than 30 times after she gave them a ride. They put the body in the back seat of her truck alongside the granddaughter as they drove elsewhere before slitting the girl’s throat and decapitating both bodies.

Strapped to a gurney before his execution, Mitchell was nonchalant when asked if he had any last words for the victims’ relatives watching behind a glass window.