Revenge versus harmony
Diné still struggle with death penalty question

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — It's been more than three years since the Navajo Nation announced a series of public forums on capital punishment to help it decide whether to embrace the death penalty for the most egregious of crimes committed on the reservation.

A recent article in Mother Jones, a liberal, nationally distributed magazine, revisits that debate, from the conditions that sparked it to the traditions that shaped the tribe's final decision.

According to author Marilyn Berlin Snell, tribes across the country came to tackle the issue head on when, in 1994, the federal government gave them the choice to "opt in," to recommend that the death penalty be applied, or "opt out."

"But perhaps no tribe — and no other community in America," she writes, "has wrestled with the question as often, as wrenchingly, and through as remarkable a process as the Navajo."

Snell begins her piece with the death of Deirdre Dale, who was brutally murdered on Feb. 24, 2001, on her way from her family's trailer in Gallup to a nearby pay phone. Snell revisits the case throughout, describing the family's struggles to cope with Dale's death and her father's gradual change of heart, from a man obsessed with revenge to a man who came to embrace life — and the Navajo principle of bringing it into balance — above all.

According to Kathleen Bowman, director of the Navajo Nation's Public Defender's Office, whom Snell interviewed, the federal government limits the maximum sentence tribal courts may issue to one year of prison and/or $5,000 in fines. But when federal prosecutors consider seeking the death penalty, they ask for the tribe's opinion.

Deferring to its belief that human life should never be taken in vengeance, and to the concept of nlyh, the Navajo Nation has always objected. When the tribe had its hearings, Bowman, who has suffered the murder of three family members, organized speakers and — testified herself — to keep it that way.

When the tribe released its report on the hearings last year, Snell writes, it recommended that the Navajo Nation keep opting out.

But Bowman doesn't believe the debate is over.

"It's still a very emotional issue, and there are people on both sides of it," she told The Independent.

Snell's article appears in the January/February edition of Mother Jones. It can be viewed online on the magazine's Web site, MotherJones.com.