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Thread: Lezmond Charles Mitchell - Federal Execution - August 26, 2020

  1. #11
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    In today's US Supreme Court orders, Mitchell's petition for certiorari was DENIED.

    Lower Ct: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
    Case Nos.: (11-99003)
    Decision Date: June 19, 2015
    Rehearing Denied: October 26, 2015

    Theoretically, his appeals are now exhausted. Unfortunately, litigation over the federal government's lethal-injection protocol has continued to be bogged down in the District of Columbia District Court since 2006.

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....es/15-8725.htm

  2. #12
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    AG Barr orders reinstatement of the federal death penalty

    Barr also directed the federal government to schedule the executions of five death-row inmates convicted of murder

    By Daniel Arkin
    NBC News

    Attorney General William Barr has ordered the reinstatement of the federal death penalty after a 16-year pause, the Department of Justice announced Thursday.

    Barr also directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of five death-row inmates convicted of murder, the Justice Department said in a news release.

    The executions are slated to take place in December 2019 and January 2020.

    “Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the President,” Barr said in a statement.

    "The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system," he added.

    The last federal execution occurred in 2003.

    In 2014, President Barack Obama ordered the Justice Department to carry out a review of capital punishment and lethal injection drugs. The review led to what was effectively a moratorium on federal executions.

    There are currently 62 inmates on federal death row, according to a list compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit.

    The list of current inmates includes convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof.

    The federal inmates whose executions have been scheduled are Daniel Lewis Lee, a member of a white supremacist group convicted of killing a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl; Lezmond Mitchell, convicted of stabbing to death a 63-year-old woman; Wesley Ira Purkey, convicted of raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl; Alfred Bourgeois, convicted of sexually molesting and beating to death his 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter; and Dustin Lee Honken, convicted of shooting five people to death.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...m_npd_nn_tw_ma
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #13
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Mitchell's execution date is December 11.

    https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/07/25/us/....google.com%2F
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  4. #14
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Native American on federal death row claims execution would be 'unjust' because Navajo Nation disavows capital punishment and murders happened on tribal land

    Attorneys for the only Native American man on death row, who is among the 5 men scheduled for the 1st federal executions since 2003, have said that his death would be a violation of tribal sovereignty.

    Lezmond Charles Mitchell, 37, is set to be executed on December 11 for the 2001 murders of Alyce Slim, 63, and her nine-year-old granddaughter Tiffany Lee on Navajo reservation land in Arizona.

    His pending execution is one of five announced on Thursday by Attorney General William Bar, in a surprise resumption of the federal death penalty after decades of an effective moratorium.

    The killer and both of the victims were Navajo tribal members - and now attorneys for Mitchell argue that the federal government does not have legal authority to carry out the execution.

    'This is the only case in the modern history of the death penalty where the federal government has denigrated tribal sovereignty in this manner, and Mr. Mitchell remains the only Native American on federal death row,' attorneys Jonathan C. Aminoff and Celeste Bacchi said in a statement to DailyMail.com on Monday.

    Although Mitchell is the only Native American on federal death row, as of last October there were about 28 Native Americans on state death rows across the country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

    The Navajo Nation is the largest tribal reservation in the US, covering about 27,400 square miles in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, with a population of about 350,000.

    The Navajo tribe opposes the death penalty and did not 'opt in' to federal executions as required of tribal nations by the 1994 Crime Bill.

    However, in 2015 the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Court ruled that while the federal government could not impose the death penalty for rape and murder on Navajo land, the carjacking charge against Mitchell made him eligible for capital punishment.

    'It does not matter that the crime occurred in Indian country, and therefore, the opt-in provision of the Federal Death Penalty Act does not apply,' the court said in its ruling. 'In other words, carjacking resulting in death carries the death penalty regardless of where it was committed.'

    The tribe's attorneys general and a chief justice have repeatedly written letters to congressional members and to federal attorneys in Arizona and New Mexico opposing Mitchell's execution.

    The latest was a July 2014 letter by then-Chief Justice Herb Yazzie to John Leonardo, who served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona from 2012 to 2017, according to the Farmington Daily Times.

    'Capital punishment is a sensitive issue for the Navajo people. Our laws have never allowed for the death penalty. It is our belief that the negative force that drives a person to commit evil acts can only be extracted by the creator. People, on the other hand, are vehicles only for goodness and healing,' Yazzie wrote.

    Murders of Alyce Slim and Tiffany Lee

    On October 28, 2001, Mitchell, then 20, and his 16–year–old accomplice, Johnny Orsinger, were seeking a vehicle to use in a robbery they planned to carry out on a trading post on the Arizona side of the reservation.
    Grandmother Alyce Slim and her 9 year-old granddaughter Tiffany were traveling to see a medicine woman on the reservation when they apparently picked up Mitchell and Orsinger as hitchhikers.

    When Slim stopped near Sawmill, Arizona, to let Mitchell and his accomplice out of the car, the men began stabbing her a total of 33 times as she tried to fight off the attack, according to court documents.

    Once dead, her body was pulled onto the rear seat. The granddaughter was put next to her.

    Mitchell drove the truck into the mountains with the girl sitting beside her grandmother's lifeless body.

    In the mountains near Tsaile, Slim's body was dragged out of the truck

    The girl was ordered out of the truck Mitchell told her 'to lay down and die,' according to court testimony.

    Mitchell cut the girl's throat twice, but she didn't die. When she did not die, Mitchell and Orsinger each dropped large rocks on her head. 20-pound rocks bearing the child's blood were later found at the scene.

    Mitchell and Orsinger left the murder scene, but later returned to hide evidence.

    While Mitchell dug a hole in the ground, Orsinger severed the heads and hands of both victims in an effort to prevent their identification.

    The dismembered parts were buried in the hole and the torsos were pulled into the woods. Mitchell and Orsinger later burned the victims' clothing and other personal effects. Mitchell washed the knives with alcohol to remove any blood.

    Mitchell's attorneys do not deny his involvement in the heinous murders, but they do argue that he is less culpable than Orsinger, who was spared the death penalty due to his age.

    'A life sentence would have been consistent with punishments meted out to similarly-situated defendants including Johnny Orsinger, Mr. Mitchell's co-defendant in these killings,' the attorneys said.

    'Mr. Orsinger, who initiated the killings, had a history of violence, and, in fact, had previously murdered two people in an unrelated incident,' they continued.

    'Mr. Mitchell, on the other hand, had no significant criminal history, no history of violence whatsoever, and was diagnosed by a board-certified psychiatrist as being psychotic at the time of the crimes.'

    3 days after the murders, Mitchell and 2 other men robbed the Red Rock Trading Post at gunpoint, driving off in Slim's stolen GMC pickup truck, which they later burned.

    On May 8, 2003, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona found Mitchell guilty of numerous offenses, including first degree murder, felony murder, and carjacking resulting in murder, and he was sentenced to death.

    Mitchell is being held on federal death row at USP Terre Haute in Indiana.

    His attorneys say that allowing his execution to go forward as scheduled on December 11 'would be a grave injustice, an affront to the Navajo Nation's values and sovereignty, and contrary to American values given our long history of discrimination towards the Native American people.'

    Full statement of Lezmond Mitchell's attorneys

    Statement issued by attorneys for Lezmond Mitchell on July 29 regarding his scheduled execution:

    'Lezmond Mitchell is a Navajo man who was convicted of the 2001 murders of two Navajo people on Navajo reservation land in Arizona. The Navajo Nation has consistently maintained its opposition to capital punishment generally, and as applied to Mr. Mitchell specifically. Despite the objections of the Navajo Nation, as well as the objections of the victims' family and the local United States Attorney's Office, the federal government insisted that Mr. Mitchell be prosecuted capitally. This is the only case in the modern history of the death penalty where the federal government has denigrated tribal sovereignty in this manner, and Mr. Mitchell remains the only Native American on federal death row.

    'The Government's violation of tribal sovereignty did not end with the decision to pursue a death sentence against Mr. Mitchell. In addition to the charging decision, the Government committed misconduct in the course of this prosecution by stashing Mr. Mitchell in a tribal jail without affording him his federal constitutional rights. For 25 days after his arrest, Mr. Mitchell was continually interrogated by the FBI without being provided with an attorney. Furthermore, in numerous different ways, the Government systematically excluded Navajos from serving on Mr. Mitchell's jury.

    'Mr. Mitchell accepts responsibility for his role in these crimes and offered to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. A life sentence would have been consistent with punishments meted out to similarly-situated defendants including Johnny Orsinger, Mr. Mitchell's co-defendant in these killings. Mr. Orsinger, who initiated the killings, had a history of violence, and, in fact, had previously murdered 2 people in an unrelated incident. Mr. Mitchell, on the other hand, had no significant criminal history, no history of violence whatsoever, and was diagnosed by a board-certified psychiatrist as being psychotic at the time of the crimes. Mr. Orsinger, who was 16 years old at the time of the crimes, received a life sentence due to his age; yet Mr. Mitchell, who had just turned 20 and was less culpable, received a death sentence.

    'Under these circumstances, allowing Mr. Mitchell's execution to go forward would be a grave injustice, an affront to the Navajo Nation's values and sovereignty, and contrary to American values given our long history of discrimination towards the Native American people.'


    (source: dailymail.co.uk)
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  5. #15
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Attorneys for Navajo man file stay of execution

    Attorneys for Lezmond Mitchell filed a motion for stay of execution with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Sept. 9.

    Mitchell was convicted in 2003 for two counts of first-degree murder of Alyce Jim and her nine-year-old granddaughter, carjacking resulting in death, and multiple counts of robbery.

    He was sentenced to death under the federal Death Penalty Act because of his conviction for carjacking resulting death.

    In July, Attorney General William P. Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to adopt a proposed addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol, which cleared the way for the federal government to resume capital punishment.

    Lezmond is among other death row inmates who are scheduled to be executed beginning in December. Mitchell’s execution date is set for Dec. 11.

    His attorneys filed a motion on behalf of Mitchell in hopes he is granted a stay. They argue their client’s ethnicity – a Navajo Indian – as well as his constitutional rights, were violated.

    “The government also held Mr. Mitchell in a tribal jail and repeatedly interrogated him, without affording him his constitutional rights,” Mitchell’s lawyers wrote in a statement. “It then took aggressive steps to exclude Native Americans from serving on his jury, and its arguments to the jury included comments directed against Mitchell’s Navajo heritage. Mr. Mitchell’s death sentence thus represents an unprecedented denigration of tribal sovereignty.”

    Mitchell appealed his conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, and in 2007, they upheld his conviction and sentence, concluding there were “no errors” that required a reversal.

    Despite this, his lawyers say Mitchell was granted a certificate of appealability in April by the court that issued a briefing schedule that would allow their client to litigate the constitutionality of his death sentence.

    “Without any prior warning, the government gave notice that it intends to execute Mitchell,” the motion for stay of execution read. “Mitchel respectfully moves this court for a stay of execution such that he may litigate his appeal to conclusion.”

    Mitchell is the only Native American person under the federal death sentence. The Navajo Nation opposes the death penalty, they added.

    https://navajotimes.com/reznews/atto...-of-execution/
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  6. #16
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    The Navajo Nation Opposed His Execution. The US Plans To Do It Anyway

    In 2003, Lezmond Mitchell was found guilty of carjacking and murder for stabbing a woman and her 9-year-old granddaughter on Navajo land in Arizona. Despite the gruesome nature of the crimes, the Navajo Nation, a federal prosecutor and even members of the victims’ family said they did not want the U.S. government to pursue the death penalty. But the Justice Department had other plans.

    A mostly-white jury sentenced Mitchell—a Navajo man—to death, while his co-defendant, who was 16 when the crimes were committed, received life in prison. Mitchell’s life was then in limbo as the federal government ceased executions for nearly two decades.

    That changed in July, when the Justice Department announced it would put Mitchell and four other men to death in December and January. “We owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system,” Attorney General William Barr said in a statement.

    While the Justice Department’s press release included the gory details of Mitchell’s crime, it left out the tangled story of how he ended up as the only Native American on federal death row—and the ongoing legal fight to spare him. Although Justice officials claimed that all five men scheduled for execution have already exhausted their appeals, Mitchell has ongoing litigation. Last week, Mitchell’s attorneys asked a federal appellate court to stay his execution, saying that “allowing [it] to go forward with so many questions unresolved would be a grave injustice, as well as an affront to the values and sovereignty of the Navajo Nation.”

    The Justice Department’s response is due Sept. 27.

    Most criminal cases out of Indian Country involve thorny jurisdictional issues, but they are thrown into stark relief when the ultimate punishment is on the line.

    In 2001, Mitchell and his co-defendant, Johnny Orsinger, hijacked the car of Alyce Slim, a Navajo woman, as she and her granddaughter were returning from a visit to a medicine woman in New Mexico. The men stabbed Slim dozens of times, put her body in the backseat next to her granddaughter, then drove to the mountains and killed the little girl. They dismembered and buried the bodies, and Mitchell used Slim’s truck to rob a reservation general store a few days later. A former attorney for Orsinger declined to comment.

    After his fingerprints were found within the truck’s burned remains, Mitchell was arrested on a tribal warrant and detained at the Navajo jail. Court records show that Mitchell remained in tribal custody for 25 days before being appointed an attorney or appearing in front of a federal judge, even though federal law enforcement were involved and would ultimately take over the case. While at the tribal jail, Mitchell was questioned multiple times by FBI agents and ultimately confessed to the crime. According to records, Mitchell was read his rights and waived them when he agreed to speak.

    Navajo Nation officials wrote a letter to the federal prosecutor assigned to the case in 2002 expressing their opposition to the death penalty for those involved in the murders, saying their culture and religion “instruct against the taking of human life for vengeance.” According to court filings, Slim’s daughter and the girl’s mother, Marlene Slim, also asked the prosecutor not to seek capital punishment. The prosecutor then told the Justice Department that he didn’t recommend the death penalty in this case.

    Despite the tribe’s opposition, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft instead found a legal work-around. He pursued a death sentence for Mitchell on the grounds that he committed a carjacking resulting in death, a crime that falls under federal authority as it relates to interstate commerce.

    After holding several public hearings, the tribe ultimately decided to opt out of the Federal Death Penalty Act entirely. That meant that any crime that was determined to be a federal offense only because it took place on their reservation could not be punishable by death. Marlene Slim testified to the tribal Public Safety Committee in favor of the decision. (Only one U.S. tribe, the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma, has opted in.)

    Ashcroft’s insistence on seeking the death penalty for Mitchell was unusual, as federal death sentences are often reserved for crimes of significant national interest. But Ashcroft had been a steadfast proponent of capital punishment. During his first year and a half in office, he went against federal prosecutors’ recommendations in a dozen cases to pursue a death sentence.

    “It's clear that America is so concerned about the safety and security of its citizens that certain crimes against the people of this country have been designated as death-eligible by Congress,” Ashcroft said in a 2002 speech. He previously told lawmakers he was confident there was an “absence of any evidence of bias or racial discrimination in the federal death penalty.” Ashcroft did not respond to a request for comment.

    Mitchell’s attorneys appealed his death sentence to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, claiming that his initial lawyer had failed to show Mitchell may have been intoxicated at the time of the crime or to stress his history of mental illness, abuse and addiction to the jury. The court ruled against Mitchell in 2015, deciding that his defense had been adequate. But in a forceful dissent, Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt noted how “anomalous” Mitchell’s case was.

    “The arbitrariness of the death penalty in this case is apparent … Mitchell, who was 20 years old at the time and had no prior criminal record, does not fit the usual profile of those deemed deserving of execution by the federal government—a penalty typically enforced only in the case of mass murderers and drug overlords who order numerous killings,” Reinhardt wrote.

    Mitchell’s ongoing appeal, filed in March 2018 in federal district court, stems from the makeup of the jury that sentenced him to death. Only one of the 12 jurors was Native American. For security reasons, the government moved the trial to a court 100 miles away, making it more difficult for Navajo jurors to participate, his lawyers claim. According to court filings, many of the prospective Native jurors were struck because Navajo was their first language or because the death penalty was against their beliefs. Prosecutors tried to dismiss the remaining Native American from the jury but were blocked by the court.

    Under-representation of Native Americans on federal juries is a common problem, due to factors such as geography, language and religious beliefs, said Jordan Gross, a law professor at the University of Montana who has studied the issue. “There are no federal district courts in Indian Country,” she said. “If I live hundreds of miles away from the federal court, and I don’t have a lot of money or resources, how am I going to get there for jury duty?”

    Mitchell’s attorneys are now asking to interview former jurors to see if there were any signs of racial bias in their decision-making. Such interviews would be allowed if the case was being heard in Arizona state court, but they are often blocked in the federal jurisdiction where his case is being heard.

    “All 116 inmates on death row in Arizona are free to conduct a reasonable investigation by informally interviewing their jurors,” the petition states. “But Mitchell, solely by virtue of the fact that he was prosecuted federally, is barred from conducting that same reasonable investigation.”

    Slim’s grandson, Michael Slim, only found out that the execution had been scheduled when a reporter called for his reaction. He supported the death penalty when Mitchell was first sentenced, but has since changed his position. In August, he wrote to Mitchell to tell him he forgives him, and signed it: “Your friend. Your Navajo brother.”

    “I don’t think he should die. It’s not my place or humanity’s place, it’s only God’s place,” Slim said in an interview. “There’s no reason another person needs to die because two people were hurt. That’s not justice, it’s revenge.”

    Mitchell is scheduled to be put to death on Dec. 11, 2019.

    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...zt2fJkHWplbyxx

  7. #17
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    I just read that the Ninth Circuit gave him a stay. Can anyone confirm this?

  8. #18
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Do you have a link to the 9th Circuit stay?
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

  9. #19
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Even if he is stayed, those under the 8th Circuit will not be so fortunate.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  10. #20
    Senior Member Frequent Poster NanduDas's Avatar
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    Link to the stay order from the 9th Circuit. Judge Ikuta dissented. My guess is that Barr will get this overturned at SCOTUS.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tby...e1ebxkkWx/view
    "The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer." -Theodore Roosevelt

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