Justices Turn Away Lone Native American on Federal Death Row

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop the execution of the only Native American on the federal government’s death row.

The justices, without any noted dissent, rejected late Tuesday night a request by Lezmond Mitchell to intervene.

Mitchell, a member of the Navajo Nation, is seeking to investigate potential racial bias on the Arizona jury that convicted him in the 2001 deaths of a 63-year-old woman and her nine-year-old granddaughter during a carjacking.

He’s scheduled to be executed on Aug. 26 and would become the fourth federal prisoner put to death since the federal government resumed executions in July following a 17-year hiatus.

Mitchell separately argued that his execution would run afoul of federal law that requires the government to execute federal prisoners in the manner prescribed by the law of the state in which a defendant is sentenced to death. He said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers Arizona, addressed the issue differently than the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit did recently. The justices should take his case to resolve the circuit split, he said.

Though she didn’t dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a statement accompanying the denial that, with more federal executions scheduled in the coming months, the issue of execution procedures warrants consideration in a future case. Mitchell’s appeal didn’t adequately present the issue, she said, so she agreed with her colleagues to deny a stay.

Mitchell’s request to stay the execution on alleged jury bias grounds was rejected without comment by any justices.

The National Congress of American Indians has urged the Trump administration to grant Mitchell clemency. His crimes were against Navajo citizens on Navajo land. Federal law gives tribes a say in whether to authorize the death penalty for murders on tribal lands. The Navajo Nation opposes capital punishment.

The tribe opposed authorization in Mitchell’s case. The federal government went around that by charging Mitchell with carjacking resulting in death, “in order to avoid this provision and obtain a death sentence despite the Navajo Nation’s objections,” NCAI said in its letter to President Trump.

The case is Mitchell v. United States, U.S., No. 20A30, Mitchell v. United States, U.S., No. 20A32.