WASHINGTON DC: The US government scheduled its fifth execution of the summer on August 17, announcing plans to kill Lezmond Mitchell, a child murderer who spent the past 17 years on death row, the Justice Department said in a press release.
"In October 2001, Mitchell murdered Alyce Slim, a 63-year-old grandmother, and her nine-year-old granddaughter as part of a carjacking in Arizona," the release said on Wednesday. "In May 2003, a jury in the US District Court for the District of Arizona found him guilty of numerous federal crimes - including first-degree murder, felony murder, and carjacking resulting in death - and he was sentenced to death."
Mitchell becomes the fifth federal prisoner scheduled for execution this summer, three of whom have already been terminated by lethal injection, according to the Justice Department.
Although several states still use capital punishment, inmates on death row in federal penitentiaries spent decades in limbo until Attorney General William Barr ended a de facto moratorium on executions of federal inmates.
More than 60 federal prisoners are awaiting execution, according to media reports. They include Dylann Roof, the gunman who massacred nine worshippers at a church service in the state of California in 2015 and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who participated in the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon.