Without any dissents, SCOTUS rejects legal claims of Native American scheduled for federal execution today
As reported here by Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog, the "Supreme Court on Tuesday night declined to block the execution, scheduled for Wednesday, of Lezmond Mitchell, the only Native American on federal death row." Here is more, with links to orders:
The justices, without any noted dissents, denied two emergency requests from Mitchell seeking to postpone the execution. Mitchell had argued that he should be given the opportunity to interview his jurors about potential bias during deliberations and that the government’s planned lethal-injection protocol violates federal law.
If the execution goes forward, Mitchell will be the fourth federal inmate executed this year after nearly two decades in which the federal government did not carry out the death penalty. Three additional federal executions are scheduled before the end of September.
Mitchell, a Navajo man, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2003 for the carjacking and stabbing deaths of Alyce Slim and her nine-year-old granddaughter, who were also members of the Navajo Nation. At Mitchell’s trial, prosecutors told jurors – all but one of whom were white – that, in the Old West, Mitchell “would have been taken out back” and “strung up.”...
Mitchell came to the Supreme Court last week, asking the justices to block his execution and take up the question of whether, in death penalty cases, district courts can bar inmates from interviewing jurors about racial bias during deliberations....
Mitchell filed a separate request on Sunday to block his execution to give the justices time to weigh in on a dispute over the interpretation of the Federal Death Penalty Act, which requires the federal government to carry out executions “in the manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence is imposed.”...
In two orders on Tuesday night, the Supreme Court rejected both of Mitchell’s requests. No justices publicly dissented, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor attached a short statement arguing that the court should soon resolve the dispute in the lower courts over how to interpret the Federal Death Penalty Act. Mitchell’s case was not the right vehicle for the court to resolve that dispute, Sotomayor wrote, because the 9th Circuit assumed an interpretation that was favorable to Mitchell but still denied him relief. “But with additional federal executions scheduled in the coming months, the importance of clarifying the FDPA’s meaning remains,” Sotomayor continued. “I believe that this Court should address this issue in an appropriate case.”
A few of many recent prior related posts:
- Justice Department announces the scheduling of four new federal execution dates
- SCOTUS, by 5-4 vote, vacates new injunction that had been blocking scheduled federal executions ... UPDATE: execution of Daniel Lewis Lee now completed
- Federal execution déjà vu: after SCOTUS votes 5-4 to vacate injunction, feds complete another morning lethal injection
- Feds, revving up machinery of death, complete third execution of week
- How many federal death row prisoners does Attorney General William Barr want to see executed in 2020?
- US Department of Justice sets another execution date for last week of August
- US Department of Justice sets two execution dates for late September
- Amidst seemingly little attention, federal government seemingly poised to carry out two more executions this week
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