Today's Daily Report, Law.com's Georgia-based legal news service posts the OpEd, "Death row inmate deserves clemency," by Eric E. Jacobson. He's the executive director of the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities.
People with intellectual disabilities, or "ID," formerly termed "mental retardation," are all around: in our families, churches, schools, neighborhoods and workplaces. Most of us are blessed to have someone whom we know personally with intellectual disability, so we understand that people with intellectual disabilities have special needs and deserve the special protection they receive under the law.
Nonetheless, the State of Georgia plans to execute Warren Hill, an intellectually disabled man who should be entitled to this protection.
Warren Hill, who would be ineligible for the death penalty outside of Georgia because of his intellectual disabilities, has been under a death sentence for 21 years. In 1991, he was convicted of the murder of a fellow prison inmate who had threatened him and was sentenced to death after his attorneys failed to uncover evidence — such as school test scores and the testimony of teachers — demonstrating that he has an intellectual disability.
Although a state court judge considering that new evidence in 2002 found that Hill is intellectually disabled — a finding unchallenged by the government or reviewing courts — Hill has continued to languish on death row.
And:
If Georgia puts Warren Hill to death, it will have failed spectacularly to uphold its moral and legal commitment not to execute persons with intellectual disabilities 14 years after passage of landmark legislation banning such executions. That legislation was enacted in response to the angry outcry which followed the execution in 1986 of an intellectually disabled Georgia man named Jerome Bowden.
Amnesty International has a fact sheet on the case, as well as a petition urging clemency for Mr. Hill. If you want to sign the petition, click on the link.
Earlier coverage of Warren Hill's case begins at the link.
More on Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court's 2002 ruling banning the execution of those with mental retardation, is via Oyez.; related posts, in the mental retardation index.
As I often point out, mental retardation is now generally referred to as a developmental or intellectual disability. Because it has a specific meaning with respect to capital cases, I continue to use the older term.
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