Death penalty

does not have jurisdiction over major crimes on reservations.

That was the case earlier this year when a California jury imposed the death penalty for Cherie Rhoades. The former leader of the Cedarville Rancheria Tribe was convicted of fatally shooting four people and trying to kill two others.

Modac County District Attorney Jordan Funk said he didn’t consult with the tribe and wasn’t required to before deciding to pursue the death penalty. He said Rhoades expressed no remorse for the killings at a tribal meeting where officials were considering her eviction from the tribe.

“If they would have told me they don’t want us to execute her, I would have done it anyway,” Funk said.

Tribes also don’t have a say over the death penalty when certain federal crimes like carjacking or kidnapping resulting in death, or killing a federal officer occurs on reservation land. Those carry a possible death sentence no matter where they happen.

That’s how Lezmond Mitchell, a Navajo man, became the only American Indian now on federal death row. He was convicted in a 2001 case of killing a fellow tribal member and her 9-yearold granddaughter.

Their beheaded, mutilated bodies were found in a shallow grave on the reservation. Mitchell stole the woman’s car and later robbed a trading post in Red Valley, Arizona.

The Navajo Nation government objected to the death penalty on the murder charges. It had no choice on the charge of carjacking resulting in death.

Tamera Begay, a Navajo woman, has studied the Mitchell case and agrees the tribe should steer clear of the death penalty. “There’s so much federal jurisdiction, that’s worrisome,” she said.

Laura Harris, executive director of Americans for Indian Opportunity and member of the Comanche Nation, said her tribe sees banishment as a far worse punishment than death because it cuts off a person’s ability to be part of the community.

She said tribes also recall how the death penalty has been used against them.

In December 1862, for example, 38 Dakota men who were at war with settlers in Minnesota were hanged in the largest mass execution in U.S. history. An annual horseback ride to remember the men ends at the site of the hangings

precious.”

in what’s now Reconciliation Park.

Today, the death penalty is more likely to be carried out in cases involving a white victim, than one of color.

Native Americans make up less than one-quarter of 1 percent of victims in cases that result in executions, according to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. For whites, it’s 75 percent, for blacks 15 percent and nearly 7 percent for Latinos.

“It’s not surprising you’d see a distrust of the judicial process similar to the distrust you see in the AfricanAmerican community,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Melissa Tatum, a research professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said most tribes believe the criminal justice system in Indian Country doesn’t work, “not in a sufficient way that they would opt into the death penalty, and the statistics bear that out.”

Pursuing the death penalty in a federal case isn’t taken lightly, said Kevin Washburn, a University of New Mexico law professor and member of the Chickasaw Nation.

And tribes can’t decide on a case-bycase basis, he said.

“You can’t have a murder that happens today and have the Navajo Nation authorize the death penalty tomorrow and have it apply to the murder that happened today,” he said.

After Ashlynne’s death, Navajo leaders met with medicine people and talked for at least two hours, ultimately deciding to maintain the tribe’s position against the death penalty, Tribal Council Speaker LoRenzo Bates said.

“Navajos see life as precious, good or bad, and so we don’t pick and choose,” he said. “All life is precious.”

Under a plea agreement, Tom Begaye Jr., the Navajo man who admitted to killing Ashlynne, faces life in prison without the possibility of release.

Ashlynne’s mother, Pamela Foster, has been gathering signatures online to convince the tribe to change its position.

“If traditional teachings are squarely against the taking of human life, WHY are we allowing it to happen?” Foster wrote in an online post.