The only Native American detained in a death corridor federal government was executed on Wednesday United States, despite the opposition expressed by the Navajo Nation.
Lezmond Mitchell, 38, received a lethal injection in the evening at Terre-Haute Penitentiary, Indiana, nineteen years after killing a girl and her grandmother, the facility management said. .
“Justice has finally been served”Justice Ministry spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement.
“A new chapter in the long history of injustices”
The convict’s lawyers deplored the addition “A new chapter in the long history of injustices suffered by Amerindian peoples”.
In the United States, most crimes are tried in state courts, but the most serious cases or cases committed in jurisdictions outside of state control, such as – with conditions – on Native American reservations, can be dealt with by federal justice.
It rarely pronounces death sentences and applies them even less often. From 1988 to July, only three convicts were executed at the federal level.
But the government of Donald Trump, a strong supporter of the death penalty, has decided to resume these executions and has already carried out three lethal injections in July. Another federal death row inmate, Keith Nelson, 45, is due to be executed on Friday.
Each time, they are child killers, often having committed their crimes in particularly violent conditions.
“Respect for beliefs”
In 2001, during a car theft with an accomplice, Lezmond Mitchell had stabbed to death a 63-year-old grandmother, then slit the throat of his 9-year-old granddaughter. He then crushed the girl’s skull with stones and buried the heads and hands of the two victims.
The events took place in Navajo territory, Arizona, and the victims were members of that tribe, as was their murderer.
However, the Navajo refuse to apply the death penalty to Amerindians and they mobilized to oppose its execution. A lawsuit over the sovereignty of tribal justice failed at the last minute in the United States Supreme Court.
Jonathan Nez, President of the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation in the United States, also asked Donald Trump to commute Lezmond Mitchell’s sentence to life imprisonment “Out of respect for religious and traditional beliefs” of the tribe.
The Republican billionaire, candidate for his re-election on November 3, did not follow up. He has often called for the death penalty to be used more, in particular for the killers of police officers, children and drug traffickers.
According to polls, support for the death penalty has declined among the American population but remains strong among Republican voters.
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