PHOENIX — After relations of a slain Navajo girl described their grief in a federal courtroom, the choose on Monday sentenced her boyfriend to life imprisonment for first-degree homicide in a case that grew to become emblematic of what officers name an epidemic of lacking and slain Indigenous ladies.
5 years after Jaime Yazzie was killed, her relations and mates cheered as they streamed out of the downtown Phoenix courthouse after U.S. District Court docket Choose Douglas L. Rayas handed down the sentence for Tre C. James.
Yazzie was 32 and the mom of three sons when she went lacking in the summertime of 2019 from her neighborhood of Pinon on the Navajo Nation. Regardless of a high-profile search, her stays weren’t discovered till November 2021 on the neighboring Hopi reservation in northeastern Arizona.
James was convicted final fall in Yazzie’s deadly capturing. The jury additionally discovered James responsible of a number of acts of home violence dedicated towards three former courting companions.
Yazzie’s three sons, now ages 18, 14, 10, and different relations attended Monday’s sentencing, together with a number of dozen supporters. One other dozen or so supporters stayed exterior to display on the sidewalk, chanting and beating drums.
“There isn’t any sentence you may impose that may stability the dimensions,” Yazzie’s mom, Ethelene Denny, instructed the choose earlier than the announcement. Denny detailed the ache the household has suffered from the second Yazzie disappeared, by means of a determined 2 1/2-year search and the last word shock and heartbreak when her stays have been discovered.
Federal prosecutors additionally performed an earlier recorded video assertion from Yazzie’s father, James Yazzie, who has since died.
“It isn’t proper,” the elder Yazzie stated within the video, who was clearly ailing and had bother talking. “Taking my daughter away and taking my grandkids’ mother. It hits me proper within the coronary heart.”
“At present’s sentence underscores the truth that Jamie Yazzie was not forgotten by the FBI or our federal and tribal companions,” FBI Phoenix Particular Agent in Cost Jose A. Perez stated in an announcement. “Our workplace is dedicated to addressing the violence that Native American communities in Arizona face day-after-day and we’ll proceed our efforts to guard households, assist victims and be certain that justice is served in every case we pursue.”
Yazzie’s case gained consideration by means of the Lacking and Murdered Indigenous Girls grassroots motion that pulls consideration to widespread violence towards Indigenous ladies and women in america and Canada.
The U.S. Inside Division’s Bureau of Indian Affairs characterizes the violence towards Indigenous ladies as a disaster.
Girls from Native American and Alaska Native communities have lengthy suffered from excessive charges of assault, abduction and homicide. A 2016 research by the Nationwide Institute of Justice discovered that greater than 4 in 5 American Indian and Alaska Native ladies — 84% — have skilled violence of their lifetimes, together with 56% who’ve been victimized by sexual violence.
