Published on: Tuesday, August 11, 2020

As the U.S. government prepares to execute Lezmond Mitchell, the only Native American man on federal death row, the leaders of the Navajo Nation have asked President Trump to reduce Mitchell's sentence to life imprisonment, article available here. "We strongly hold to our cultural, traditional, and religious beliefs that life is sacred," Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and Vice President Myron Lizer wrote in a recent letter. Nez cited the tribe’s longstanding opposition to the death penalty in a July 31 letter to Trump that asks for the sentence of Lezmond Mitchell to be reduced to life in prison. Tribal officials and even the victims' family opposed his death penalty.

Mitchell is scheduled to be executed on August 26, 2020. But putting Mitchell to death would violate Navajo beliefs and challenge tribal sovereignty. Mitchell and a co-defendant, both of whom are Navajo, killed a Navajo woman and her 9-year-old granddaughter on a Navajo reservation in 2001. Federal prosecutors typically can't seek the death penalty for a major crime committed on a reservation without the tribe's approval, and most tribes reject capital punishment. The Navajo Nation did not agree with pursuing the death penalty for Mitchell's murder charges. So federal prosecutors also charged him with carjacking, a lesser offense, and they were able to seek the death penalty on that charge over the tribe's objections.

The Mitchell case would be the first time in the modern history of the death penalty that the federal government executed a Native American for a crime committed entirely on tribal lands and against fellow tribe members.

Mitchell has appealed his conviction, arguing racial bias may have tainted his jury trial. His appeal was rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Two judges on the Court of Appeals expressed deep concerns about the federal government's actions in Mitchell's case. Judge Morgan Christen called the pursuit of the death penalty in the case "a betrayal of a promise made to the Navajo Nation."