James Allen Red Dog

James Allen Red Dog (1954–March 3, 1993) was a mixed Sioux and Assiniboine from Fort Peck Indian Reservation who was executed at his own request for murdering Hugh Pennington and who had previously been convicted twice of armed robbery. As a result of his crimes, Joe Biden introduced legislation that required states to be notified by federal officials when dangerous criminals were placed in their jurisdictions.

Red Dog's heritage was a mix of Sioux and Assiniboine. He was a member of the Lakota tribe, and grew up on Fort Peck Reservation in Poplar, in northeast Montana. He blamed poverty on his reservation for his crimes later in life; he said that there were no jobs and he could only make a living on crime. According to a family acquaintance, who asked not to be named, at age 8 or 10 Red Dog tried to emulate the lifestyle of an older half-brother whom he admired, who as of 1993 was in a federal prison. The acquaintance also said that life had "very little" to offer Red Dog.

This murder led to his being sentenced to death in April 1992. Four days later, police caught Red Dog 100 miles from where he was last seen, walking across Winchester Bridge in Wilmington. He had a strange odor; he later told his lawyer that he had smeared himself with deer feces to divert police dogs. When charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and four counts of rape, he pleaded no contest, saying he had been so drunk that he did not remember the killing. He could not think of a motive either, blaming childhood poverty and life in prison. He suggested in the television interview that Pennington might have done something to trigger hate he developed in prison.

Red Dog became the second convict to be executed since Delaware reinstated executions in 1992. Steven Brian Pennell, executed in March 1992, was the first; prior to that, none had taken place since 1946. Red Dog decried the "festive" atmosphere of the Pennell execution and said he hoped "that my execution will be conducted with more solemnity than a circus act!"

Red Dog wrote in court papers in 1992 that he "[wanted] to expedite this for the families", both his and those of his victims. The defense attorney said he did not have a trial because he expressed a lot of remorse and wanted to spare the Pennington family the "whole trial stage".

He was to have received his lethal injection in July 1992, as ordered by Judge Barron, but under Delaware law the death sentence was automatically appealed to the State Supreme Court, so Judge Barron's ruling wasn't upheld until November; the case was rescheduled for March 3.

In February 1991 Red Dog drove north to Pennington's suburban Wilmington home in New Castle County. He appeared in Pennington's kitchen on 9 February 1991 after a day spent drinking. He woke Pennington, still in pajamas, and forced him into a basement workshop. According to Wood, Pennington said or did "something very minor" that in Red Dog's homicidal state was enough to enrage him. Red Dog tied his wrists and ankles with duct tape and electrical cord, and forced him to lie on his back on the floor, then cut his throat. According to prosecutors he took off his boots so they wouldn't be stained with blood. He nearly decapitated Pennington with his knife; the wound was 6 inches deep.

Red Dog escaped from prison after being convicted of robbery and was on parole when he arrived in Delaware in 1988. He was placed there under the federal witness protection program in 1988 as a witness in an investigation about prison gangs and the militant American Indian Movement. While there he taught Sioux traditions to Delaware's Nanticoke Indians. At the time he killed Hugh Pennington, a 30-year-old motel night auditor and friend of Red Dog's wife Bonnie Red Dog, he was living outside Wilmington with Bonnie who worked as a secretary; Pennington and his mother lived nearby. Pennington also worked at the Tally Ho Motor Lodge with Bonnie.

In 1977, while on furlough from jail to attend a Native American ceremony, he escaped and fled with a companion to Los Angeles, where they met two Native American men in a bar who offered to lodge them for the night; they stabbed the men to death in their sleep. Red Dog pleaded guilty to two counts of second degree murder but was given a sentence concurrent with armed robbery; Wood said it was "mind-boggling" that he served no extra time for the murder. In the 1980s, while in an Illinois prison, he provided heroin to kill a prison gang member who had offended other inmates.

Red Dog once told a television interviewer that since his first serious crime, an armed robbery in 1973, he had been "prepared to die". Along with another man, he robbed a liquor and pizza store on the reservation in 1973. The owner was killed and Red Dog was sentenced to prison.