MENTALLY ILL BLACK MAN FROM GEORGIA SET TO BE EXECUTED TONIGHT!!! (2289 hits)
From GlobalResearch.com February 19, 2013
Disability campaigners are making a last-ditch appeal for clemency for Warren Hill, an intellectually disabled prisoner who is scheduled to be put to death on Tuesday evening despite a US supreme court ban on capital punishment in such cases.
A coalition of disability rights groups assembled on the steps of the Georgia state capitol in Atlanta to plead for a stay of execution for Hill, 53, who is scheduled to be killed with a single injection of pentobarbital at Georgia's Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson at 7pm ET tonight. Hill has now been diagnosed by all medical specialists who have evaluated him as having learning disabilities.
Eric Jacobson, head of the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities, a state agency, said that if the execution went ahead it would "send a message to our society that we are not concerned about some of our most vulnerable citizens." He added a man was about to be put to death who could not fully understand the difference between right and wrong as a result of his condition.
Rita Young of the Atlanta-based All About Developmental Disabilities pointed out that even in Texas, which tops the league table of states that carry out capital punishment, Hill would not be executed. "If we were in Texas, we wouldn't be here waiting for Warren Hill to be executed," she said.
Georgia is the only state in the union that insists that death row inmates must prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that they are intellectually disabled – or "mentally retarded" in the designation still widely used in US judicial circles – if they are to avoid execution. The US supreme court banned the death penalty for "mentally retarded" prisoners in 2002, but left it up to individual states to determine how they would define the condition with their own "appropriate" procedures.
While Georgia requires a standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt", all other states say that it must be "by a preponderance of the evidence" – that is, a prisoner must be most likely to be intellectually impaired. The disability campaigners who gathered at the Capitol on Tuesday warned that Georgia had created a trap for disabled people, because in mild cases such as Hill's it was almost impossible to prove beyond doubt their challenges.
Hill was put on death row for the 1990 murder of a fellow prisoner, Joseph Handspike. He was already on a life sentence for having killed his girlfriend, Myra Wright.
The coalition of disability groups are pushing the Georgia state assembly to change the law to bring it in line with the other 49 states by lowering the burden of proof to "preponderance of the evidence". By that standard Hill would have been taken off death row long ago – he was found to be intellectually disabled by a preponderance of the evidence by a Georgia court in 2002.
"The law must be changed. It would only take two small paragraphs to change our burden of proof and prohibit those with intellectual disabilities from being executed," Young said.
She added that when they had begun lobbying Georgia's legislators, they had discovered that many of them were not even aware of the state's uniquely heavy burden of proof.
But any change in the statute books would come too late for Hill. His lawyer, Brian Kammer, is fighting for his life on several fronts as the prisoner enters his final few hours. He is asking the state's board of pardons to reconsider its decision of last week not to grant clemency in this case; he has a habeas petition filed with Georgia's appeal court; and he is also asking the US supreme court to intervene to prevent its own 2002 ruling being flouted.
Kammer is armed in these last attempts to save his client with new testimony from three doctors who last week overturned their previous evaluation of Hill. Twelve years ago, following a rushed process of examining the prisoner, they found him to be fully mentally capable and thus eligible for execution.
But they have now reconsidered their opinion in the light of a more thorough investigation of court materials and modern scientific understanding, and have concluded that he is intellectually disabled after all.
He was already on a life sentence for having killed his girlfriend, Myra Wright. Hill was put on death row for the 1990 murder of a fellow prisoner, Joseph Handspike.
I hope that the State of Georgia can find a solution; the prisoner was already serving a life sentence.
Thank you Siebra for this post.
Tuesday, February 19th 2013 at 6:56PM
Aphrodite Cox
Courts halt Georgia killer Warren Hill's execution By Rhonda Cook and Bill Rankin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Condemned killer Warren Lee Hill, whose mental retardation claims have attracted international attention, was spared execution Tuesday night with less than an hour to go before he was to be put to death.
Hill had already been given a sedative to prepare for his lethal injection, shortly after the state parole board declined to commute Hill’s capital sentence and after the Georgia Supreme Court rejected his final appeal.
Even the U.S. Supreme Court declined to issue a stay, which could be a sign that his chances are slim of avoiding another scheduled execution.
But then, the federal appeals court in Atlanta, by a 2-1 vote, halted Hill’s execution for at least 30 days.
“All of the experts — both the state’s and (Hill’s) — now appear to be in agreement that Hill is in fact mentally retarded,” Judges Rosemary Barkett and Stanley Marcus wrote in granting Hill a “conditional” stay of execution.
Judge Frank Hull dissented, saying there is a wealth of “reliable and unbiased evidence” in the voluminous case that shows Hill is not mentally retarded.
At about the same time the federal appeals court issued its stay, the Georgia Court of Appeals issued its own, saying it needed more time to consider a separate challenge to Georgia’s lethal-injection procedure.
“I’m relieved that someone took a serious look at Warren’s claims,” Hill’s attorney, Brian Kammer, said shortly after telling his client the news. Hill was somewhat unresponsive and sounded nervous, even when told his execution had been put on hold, Kammer said.
Hill was sentenced to death for killing Joseph Handspike, an inmate serving a life sentence in the same southwest Georgia prison where Hill was incarcerated. Hill bludgeoned Handspike to death with a nail-studded wooden board as Handspike lay in his bed.
At the time, Hill was already serving a life term for another gruesome murder. Hill killed his 18-year-old girlfriend, Myra Wright, by shooting her 11 times in 1986.
Hill’s scheduled execution, which would have taken place at the Georgia Diagnostic Prison in Jackson, prompted calls Tuesday by disability rights advocates for changes in the way Georgia determines whether an inmate meets the criteria for mental retardation. In 1988, Georgia became the first state to ban executions of the mentally retarded, and the U.S. Supreme Court declared the practice unconstitutional nationwide in 2002.
But Georgia is the only state in the nation to require capital defendants to prove their mental retardation beyond a reasonable doubt — the most difficult burden of proof to clear.
“It’s time to take another look at the law,” Rita Young, director of public policy for All About Developmental Disabilities, said Tuesday at a rally outside the state Capitol.
She urged the Legislature to require capital inmates prove their mental retardation by a preponderance of the evidence — or more likely than not. This is the same requirement used by more than 20 other states with the death penalty.
Eric Jacobson, executive director of the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities, said Hill’s intellectual disabilities could be traced back to elementary school when teachers recognized his deficits.
“Nobody disputes anymore than Warren Hill has an intellectual disability,” Jacobson said.
But state experts called to testify in a 2000 hearing for Hill said they believed he was faking his mental disability. They noted Hill served in the Navy and was promoted to the rank of petty officer, and that relatives had said Hill often stepped into the role of head of the family.
The state court judge who oversaw that hearing also heard testimony from four defense experts who said they believed Hill was mentally retarded. This judge found that Hill proved he was mentally retarded, but only by a preponderance of the evidence, not by the strict standard required by Georgia law. Another judge made a similar ruling, which brought new attention to Hill’s case.
Early this month, Hill’s attorneys released affidavits from the three experts called upon by state attorneys during the 2000 hearing. The experts now say they believe they had been mistaken.
The doctors — two psychiatrists and a psychologist — described their evaluations of Hill more than a decade ago as rush jobs and said the scientific understanding of mental retardation has grown over the past 12 years, giving them better insights into evaluating a person such as Hill.
All three said they have taken another look at the case and believe Hill now meets the criteria for mental retardation.
Hill’s lawyer used this new information in last-ditch appeals filed in state court, saying it would be a miscarriage of justice to execute Hill with the new evidence. Kammer also asked the State Board of Pardons and Paroles to take another look at Hill’s request for clemency.
In court filings, Deputy Attorney General Beth Burton called the three former state experts disingenuous and said they had ignored IQ test results that showed Hill did not meet the criteria for mental retardation.
In 2000, each of the experts evaluated Hill and were firm in their conclusions, Burton wrote. “Their current affidavits, provided 13 years later without additional testing and little additional evidence, does not establish a miscarriage of justice.”
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta issued its stay in part because of the recent reversals of opinions by the state’s experts, Kammer said. “The 11th Circuit was correct to intervene in this case and prevent a mentally retarded man from being put to death tonight,” he said.
30 days... that's a good thing
Wednesday, February 20th 2013 at 4:24PM
Cynthia Merrill Artis
HERE IS WHY I CONTINUE TO SAY IS IS US WHO MUST TAKE TEH LEAD IN US NOT GETTING BVBOE TO NOT BE WORTH THE LEGAL PAPERSIT IS WRITTEN ON...
EXAMPLE AS BROWNV BOARD OF EDUCATION SAYS IT IS ILLEGAL INALL 50 STATES WHIKE JIM CROW SAYS I TMUST BELEFT UP TOTHE INDIVIDUAL STATES AKA JIM CROW...
NOW LETS MOVE ON TO WHY WE LIVE UNDER JIM CROW AND NOT UNDER FEDERAL LAW...
STATES SAYS YO CAN NOT KILL A WHITE MAN WITH THIS METHOD BECAUSE TO DO SO IS CRUEAL AND INHUMANE TREATMENTS...GET WHERE WHERE I AM COMING FROM?!? (NUP)
AND PLEASE DON'T BESOCKED OUR FEDERALGOVERMENT STILLSAYS YOU CANNOT KILLIN PRISONS BECASE IS IS ILLEGAL...
AND,HERE WE RUN UP AGAINST TAHT OLDWORD...PRIVATE PRISONS BEATS IT EVERY TIME BECAUSE AGAIN WE STILL BELIEVE IT WAS ABOUT GOING TO WHITE SCHOOLS NOW DON'T WE...LIKE PRISONS, BUS COMAPNYS ARE PRIVATELY OWN AS WERE THOSE DRUG STORS WE DI SIT-INS AT...BUT HOW KNOWS TTHE SIT INS WER THE FIRST OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT...NOT TAUGHT ON TV RIGHT OR THERE IS NO WAY THEIS MAN WOULD BE DYUING FOR WALKING, LIVIING,COMMITING A 'CRIME WHILE NONWHITE!!!!!!!!!!! (NUP!!!)
Thursday, April 10th 2014 at 6:47PM
ROBINSON IRMA
SO SORRY LOV,BUT I WAS SO UPSET READINGTHIS POST...IT REMINDED ME OF HOW OUR GOV IS NOW TRYING TOPUTOUR LAW SUITS OUTOF BUSINESS BECAUSE WE ARE ABOUT TO BANK RUPT THE STATE FOR STATE SANTIONED AKA JIM CROWN LAWS GIVNG THIS STATE TO NOT IVE OUR MEN A SHOT IN THE ARM FOR A COLD AND IT WA MUCH EASIERER TODO SO TO GETTPHENOMIA AND TO DIE, CANCER WAS A LITTLE TO SLOW IN KILLING THEM TOMAKE ROOM FOR MORE BLACKS...
LOV DEAD IS DEAD BE IT YO PUT A NEEDLE IN AN ARE ORNOT PUT A NEEDLE IN TH ARM IF THE PURPOSE OD DOING SO IS TO KILL THAT BLACK MALE...
TIS STATE IS ONE OF OUR 50STATES BUT IT MIGHT AS WELL NOT BE ONE BECAUSE OUR FEDERAL LAWS DON'T WORK THERE OR THIS MAN WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO BE PUT TO DEATH ,PERIOD,NO OTHER DEFENSE IS NEEDED AT ALL!!!
FEDERAL SAYS ALLPEOPLEIN ANY 50 STATGES MUST ALLUNDER FEDERAL LAWS...
JIM CROP SAYS NO... (SMILE)
Thursday, April 10th 2014 at 6:47PM
ROBINSON IRMA
WHITE MAN KILLS 20 SMALL CHILDREN IN LESS THAN A MINUTE...
"NOT GUILTY BECAUSE OF MENTAL ILLNESS"...PLEASE GIVEA WORKING BRAIN A BREAK!!!!!!!!!!! I NEVER ACCEPTCOVER-UPS OF WHAT IT RREALLY GOING ON (NUP)
WHEN THE SUPREME COURT REJECTS A CASE "HUSTON THEY HAVE A PROBLEM THEY CAN'T PRAY AWAY"LOL...
Thursday, April 10th 2014 at 6:47PM
ROBINSON IRMA
