Jemez Pueblo man gets life for killing woman

Gavin Yepa had been found guilty of murder in sexual assault

New Mexico’s chief federal judge imposed a life sentence Wednesday on a Jemez Pueblo man for felony murder despite his lawyer’s argument that the proposed sentence was “excessive and disproportionate in light of the sad and tragic facts surrounding this case.”

Gavin Yepa was convicted at trial in August of a sexual assault so brutal that the victim, Lynette Yazzie Becenti, a 38-year-old Navajo woman and journeyman electrician, died from extensive blood loss.

Assistant federal defender Brian Pori suggested another man, a witness who testified with immunity, had been the actual perpetrator responsible for the rape. But jurors convicted Yepa of a single count for which the mandatory sentence was life.

Pori argued that Chief Judge M. Christina Armijo should depart from the mandatory sentence because of Yepa’s family ties, his lack of guidance as a youth, his voluntary disclosure of the offense, the fact that this alleged offense was utterly aberrant, and because of “other factors which have not been fully considered by the United States Sentencing Guidelines.”

Pori wrote that “but for the fact that he is a Native American, he would not face a mandatory sentence for life in prison without the possibility of parole for the offense of first-degree murder.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Niki Tapia-Brito noted that a pathologist documented blunt force injuries to the victim’s head and neck, to her chest, abdomen, back, hips, buttocks, arms and legs, and cuts consistent with a sexual assault.

Tapia-Brito said the defense argument ignores the fact that any defendant, irrespective of race, who is convicted of firstdegree murder within a federal jurisdiction faces the same mandatory minimum sentence of life without release. A non-Indian who commits the same offense within a federal enclave, or in Indian Country, would be prosecuted under the Indian Country Crimes Act and would face the same mandatory minimum sentence, she said in a brief.

The case was prosecuted as part of the Tribal Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Pilot Project in the District of New Mexico sponsored by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women.