PHOENIX — Editor's note: The above video talks about Arizona's most notorious female killers.
The Justice Department says it will execute five inmates starting in December, including one convicted in Arizona, after announcing it will resume executions of federal death row inmates.
Lezmond Mitchell was found guilty of first-degree murder and carjacking resulting in murder on May 8, 2003. He was sentenced to death by a jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.
Mitchell, according to the Justice Department, stabbed a 63-year-old grandmother to death and "forced her nine-year-old granddaughter to sit beside her lifeless body for a 30- to 40-mile drive."
He slit the little girl's throat twice and crushed her head with a rock. He severed and buried the head and hands of both victims.
Mitchell is the only Native American currently on federal death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
In 2014, President Barack Obama directed the department to conduct a review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs, which effectively was a freeze on executions.
It was the same year a botched execution left a man convulsing and suffering for two hours before he died in Arizona.
The department says the Bureau of Prisons has completed the review and the executions can continue.
In a statement, Attorney General William Barr said the "Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system."
Mitchell is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 11, 2019.
The Associated Press and TEGNA contributed to this report.