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| Navajo President Backs Death Penalty on Reservation |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 06/10/2003 |
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The Navajo Nation president wants the tribe to consider reversing its long-held opposition to capital punishment, saying he supports the death penalty for especially violent murders on the reservation. ''Criminals who commit depraved and heinous murders don't deserve to be among society,'' tribal president Joe Shirley Jr. said. The Navajo Nation, like many American Indian tribes, has long opposed the death penalty and refused to allow tribal members to face capital punishment. Federal prosecutors handle serious crimes on American Indian reservations but cannot seek the death penalty unless tribes sign an accord allowing it. Shirley's public support of the death penalty comes in response to a string of high-profile murders and an alarming increase in crime on Navajo land, his spokeswoman Charmaine Jackson said. In one such case, Elvira Charley was convicted in January of shooting three of her young children to death in what prosecutors said was an attempt to get back at her estranged husband. She faces three life sentences. Violent crime on the Navajo reservation is six times the national average, and the rate is much higher in some towns, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Flagstaff. Assistant U.S. Attorney Vincent Kirby said two committees of the tribe's legislative branch previously held hearings on the issue but never came to any conclusion. Navajo Attorney General Louis Denetsosie said support for the death penalty is ''pretty well divided'' among Navajos today. ''A lot of younger people don't view tradition as a reason to withhold the death penalty,'' he said. The Navajo Nation, with a population of more than 173,000 people, has the nation's largest reservation, 25,000 square miles over New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. |
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