The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area–Background Paper 2021 A member of the Navajo Nation became the first Native American in modern history to be executed by the United States government for a crime committed against another Native American on tribal land, and despite the tribe’s objections.203 His tribe opposes capital punishment on cultural and religious grounds and has never “opted in” to the federal death penalty.204 The federal death penalty raised concerns also related to the interpretation of the Federal Death Penalty Act given the lack of sufficient procedural guarantees, the methods of execution and the compressed execution schedule. Justice Sotomayor, Justice Ginsburg and Justice Kagan, in a dissenting opinion relating to Barr et. al. v. Daniel Lewis Lee, challenged the, “government’s artificial claim of urgency to truncate ordinary procedures of judicial review.”205 They highlighted that denying the prisoners’ challenge concerning the methods of execution, “sets a dangerous precedent.”206 The majority of the 13 executions undertaken at the federal level happened in the middle of the night, after the Supreme court dismissed orders of lower courts that had stayed the executions.207 The resumption of capital punishment at the federal level attracted considerable criticism. At the OSCE Permanent Council, concerns were raised in a number of statements, including from the EU,208 the Russian Federation,209 and a group of nations represented by Norway.210 The PACE General Rapporteur on Abolition of the Death Penalty also expressed his disappointment and emphasized that the federal executions 203 Death Penalty Information Center, As Courts Deny Execution Challenges, Native Americans Nationwide Call for Clemency for Federal Death-Row Prisoner Lezmond Mitchell, 20 August 2020. 204 Equal Justice Initiative, U.S. Plans to Execute Lezmond Mitchell Over Navajo Nation’s Objections, 26 August 2020. 205 William P. Barr, Attorney General, ET AL. v. Daniel Lewis Lee, ET AL. on Application for Stay or Vacatur, 14 July 2020, 591 U. S. ____ (2020). 206 Death Penalty Information Centre, The Federal Government Restarts Federal Executions Amid Procedural Concerns and a Pandemic, 20 July 2020. 207 ACLU, Atrocities of the Federal Death Penalty, 2 February 2021. 208 “EU on Death Penalty in the United States of America”, OSCE Permanent Council, 14 May 2020, “EU Statement on the Federal Death Penalty in the United States of America”, 2 July 2020, “EU Statement on the resumption of federal executions in the United States” 23 July 2020 and “EU Statement on Federal Executions in the United States” 17 December 2020. 209 “Statement by Alexander Lukashevich, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation, at the 1267th Meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council”, 14 May 2020, “Statement by Alexander Lukashevich, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation, at the 1273rd Meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council” 2 July 2020, “Statement by Alexander Lukashevich, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation, at the 1276th Meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council”, 23 July 2020: The Russian Federation expressed serious concern about the situation of the death penalty in the United States, the possibility that the methods of execution could cause suffering amounting to torture, and miscarriages of justice in the United States. 210 On matters of the death penalty, Norway often speaks in the OSCE Permanent Council on behalf of a group of states made up of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Norway. See “Statement on the death penalty in the United States of America”, OSCE Permanent Council, 14 May 2020. 50