TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — The United States put to death on Wednesday the only Native American on federal death row, multiple media outlets reported.

Lezmond Mitchell, 38, was convicted for his involvement in the 2001 murders of Alyce Slim of Arizona and her 9-year-old granddaughter, NBC News reported.

Mitchell, a member of the Navajo Nation, is the fourth federal inmate executed this summer after the U.S. Department of Justice nixed a 17-year hiatus and reinstated the federal death penalty.

Mitchell, 38, died by lethal injection at 6:29 p.m. Wednesday in Terre Haute, Indiana.

In a statement issued after the execution, the Navajo Nation called the action “an affront” to the tribe because “we should be the ones to decide these matters.”

According to CNN, attorneys for Mitchell said the federal government “added another chapter to its long history of injustices against Native American people” with his execution.

“The very fact that he faced execution despite the tribe’s opposition to a death sentence for him reflected the government’s disdain for tribal sovereignty,” attorneys Jonathan Aminoff and Celeste Bacchi wrote in a statement.

Mitchell was convicted in connection with the 2001 murders of 63-year-old Slim and her granddaughter, Tiffany Lee, on the Navajo reservation in Arizona’s northeast corner, CNN reported.

According to NBC News, prosecutors argued successfully that Mitchell and his co-defendant murdered Slim and Lee, dismembered both bodies and buried them, so they could steal Slim’s pickup truck and use it in an armed robbery.

Mitchell, who was 20 when the crimes occurred, was found guilty of first-degree murder, felony murder and carjacking resulting in death, the network reported.

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Cox Media Group