Lezmond Mitchell v. United States

Opinion by Judge SILVERMAN; Partial Dissent by Judge REINHARDT.

OPINION

Defendant Lezmond Mitchell, then 20 years old, plottéd with three others to carjack a vehicle for use in an armed robbery of a trading post located on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. On October 28, 2001, Mitchell and his 16-year-old accomplice, Johnny Orsinger, abducted 63-year-old Alyce Slim and her nine-year old granddaughter. Slim and the child were traveling to New Mexico in Slim’s GMC pickup truck. Somewhere near Sawmill, Arizona, Mitchell and Orsinger killed Slim by stabbing her 33 times. Her dead body was pulled into the rear of the truck, where the child was made to sit beside it. Mitchell then drove the truck into the nearby mountains.

Thirty or forty miles later, Slim’s body' was dragged out of the truck. • Mitchell told the little girl to get out and “lay down and die.” Mitchell then cut her throat twice. When she did not die, Mitchell and Orsinger each dropped large rocks on her head. Twenty-pound rocks bearing the child’s blood were later found at the scene.

Mitchell and Orsinger left the murder scene, but later returned to hide evidence. While Mitchell dug a hole in the ground, Orsinger…

dissenting in part:

I would grant Mitchell’s petition for ha-beas relief with respect to the penalty, phase of his trial because he was deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel. Counsel’s “good guy” defense was unreasonable in light of the facts and circumstances of the crimes Mitchell committed, and also because the minimal investigation underlying counsel’s choice of strategy was constitutionally deficient. Before delving into the myriad ways in which counsel performed deficiently, however, I would note that this is a highly unusual death-penalty case in several respects, all of which exacerbate the impropriety of sending Mitchell to his death in violation of his constitutional rights to a fair trial, but none of which is more disturbing than the failure to give the jurors the opportunity to understand what made him the person he became before they voted to have him executed.

I.

Federal executions are quite rare and are normally reserved for the most heinous of crimes that are of national significance. There have been only three executions since the federal death penalty was reintroduced in 1988 — one being in the Oklahoma City bombing case in which 168…

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

LEZMOND C. MITCHELL, No. 11-99003 Petitioner-Appellant, D.C. No. v. 3:09-cv-08089-MHM

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent-Appellee. OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona Mary H. Murguia, Circuit Judge, Presiding*

Argued and Submitted February 20, 2014 Submission Vacated February 27, 2014 Resubmitted April 21, 2015 Pasadena, California

Filed June 19, 2015

Before: Stephen Reinhardt, Barry G. Silverman, and Kim McLane Wardlaw, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Silverman; Partial Dissent by Judge Reinhardt

* The Honorable Mary H. Murguia, then a district court judge, was the original trial judge in 2003 and presided over the 28 U.S.C. § 2255 proceedings that concluded in 2010. She was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2011. SUMMARY**

Habeas Corpus/Death Penalty

The panel affirmed the district court’s denial of federal prisoner Lezmond Mitchell’s 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion challenging his convictions under the Major Crimes Act for…