Justice Department schedules 2 additional federal executions

Justice Department schedules 2 additional federal executions

https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/d...d1ab5698d66425FILE - In this July 17, 2020, file photo the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind., is shown. The Justice Department scheduled two additional federal executions on Friday, July 31, an announcement that comes weeks after it fought off last-minute legal challenges and successfully resumed federal executions following a 17-year pause. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)


By MICHAEL BALSAMO AND MICHAEL TARM ASSOCIATED PRESS
JULY 31, 2020 5:03 PM

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department scheduled two additional federal executions on Friday, an announcement that comes weeks after it fought off last-minute legal challenges and successfully resumed federal executions following a 17-year pause.

The executions of Christopher Andre Vialva and William Emmett LeCroy are both scheduled to be carried out in late September. The government carried out three executions in July, and two other executions had been set previously for August.
Vialva, 40, was convicted along with a co-defendant in the 1999 kidnapping and killing of an Iowa couple at Fort Hood in Texas. The youth ministers had stopped to use a payphone in Killeen, Texas, and agreed to give Vialva and two others a ride, authorities said. Vialva pulled out a gun, forced the couple into the trunk and drove around for several hours, stopping at ATMs to withdraw cash and attempting to pawn the woman’s wedding ring, according to prosecutors.

The victims, Todd and Stacie Bagley, were both shot in head and placed in trunk of their car, which then was set afire. Vialva -- who is the first Black inmate to be scheduled to be executed since the federal government resumed the death penalty this year -- is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24. A co-defendant in the case, Brandon Bernard, also received death sentence, though his execution date has not yet been scheduled.

LeCroy, 50, of Georgia, was convicted of raping and killing Joann Lee Tiesler, a 30-year-old nurse, in 2001 and then stealing her car. Prosecutors said he broke into her home and attacked her when she came home from a shopping trip, binding her hands behind her back before he strangled her with an electrical cord and raped her. They said he then slit Tiesler’s throat and stabbed her repeatedly in the back.

At the time, one of LeCroy’s lawyers argued he should face state charges and not be tried in federal court under the federal carjacking statute.

LeCroy’s lawyers said he had no intention of stealing the car when he was burglarizing Tiesler’s home. He was arrested at the U.S.-Canada border and was previously convicted of firearms and drug offenses, burglary, aggravated assault and child sex abuse charges.

LeCroy is scheduled to be executed on September 26.

The resumption of federal executions by lethal injection at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, started on July 14, with the execution of former white supremacist Daniel Lewis Lee. Two others, Wesley Purkey and Dustin Honken, were executed later the same week.

Anti-death penalty groups say President Donald Trump is pushing for executions prior to the November election in a cynical bid to burnish a reputation a law-and-order leader.

U.S. officials have portrayed the executions, particularly those of men convicted of brutal killings of children, as bringing long-delayed justice for victims and their families. There are currently 58 men and one woman on federal death row, all of them in Terre Haute.

At least until this year, the federal government has not been prolific executioner compared to states.

Combined, states have executed thousands of people over decades. But just 37 were executed for federal crimes between 1927 and 2003, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Thirty-four were executed between 1927 and 1963, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg — put to death in 1953 for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets.

No federal executions were carried out from 1963 to 2001. And only three happened from 2001 to 2003. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was among them.

The Justice Department announced an Aug. 26 execution date for the only Native American on federal death row, Lezmond Mitchell, earlier this week. Officials had previously set Keith Dwayne Nelson’s execution for the same week in August.

Mitchell was convicted of the 2001 killing of a woman and her 9-year-old granddaughter. Nelson was convicted of kidnapping a 10-year-old girl while she was rollerblading near her Kansas home, raping her in a forest, then strangling her.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com...ral-executions

U.S. executes only Native American on federal death row

Jonathan Allen
,Reuters•August 26, 2020

https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/tL...1cd4594e06276f
FILE PHOTO: The sun sets on the Federal Corrections Complex in Terre Haute More

By Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) - 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.

"No, I'm good," he said, according to a media representative allowed to witness the execution. It took about 10 minutes for him to stop moving after the lethal injections began.

Afterward, the eyes of Tiffany's father, Daniel Lee, welled with tears as his lawyer read a statement to reporters.

"I have waited 19 years to get justice for my daughter, Tiffany," the statement said. "But I hope this will bring some closure." The statement added that without the Trump administration's resumption of executions, "I do not think I would have ever received justice or a sense of finality."


NAVAJO OBJECTIONS
Mitchell was sentenced to death in an Arizona federal court over the objection of Navajo officials, who said the tribe's cultural values prohibited taking human life "for vengeance." At least 13 other tribes joined the Navajo Nation in urging Trump this month to commute Mitchell's sentence to life in prison.

Oslinger was a teenager at the time and ineligible for the death sentence.

Under the Major Crimes Act, the federal government has jurisdiction over certain major crimes occurring on Indian territory, including murder, but usually cannot pursue capital punishment for a Native American for a crime on tribal land without the tribe's consent.

Navajo officials, along with leaders of other tribes, have opposed the death penalty, including in Mitchell's case. But John Ashcroft, attorney general under then-President George W. Bush, overrode federal prosecutors in Arizona who said they would defer to the tribe's position against pursuing a capital case.

In what Mitchell's lawyers deride as a legal loophole, federal prosecutors successfully pursued a capital case against Mitchell for carjacking, a crime that is not among those listed in the Major Crimes Act.

The Navajo Nation said in a statement after Mitchell's execution that it had been ignored by the federal government and demanding a meeting to see that tribe members were not executed in the future.

"We don't expect federal officials to understand our strongly held traditions of clan relationship, keeping harmony in our communities, and holding life sacred," the statement said. "What we do
expect, no, what we demand, is respect for our People, for our Tribal Nation, and we will not be pushed aside any longer."

https://news.yahoo.com/u-execute-onl...110542174.html