"Clemency considered for death inmate found mentally disabled," is by Bill Rankin for today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Twenty-four years after Georgia became the first in the nation to ban the execution of the mentally disabled, the state is scheduled to put to death a man deemed so by a judge.
Warren Lee Hill is set to die by lethal injection Wednesday for fatally bludgeoning a fellow prison inmate with a nail-studded, 2-by-6 wooden board. At the time, Hill was serving a life sentence at a southwest Georgia prison for killing his 18-year-old girlfriend.
Georgia enacted the groundbreaking law banning the execution of those who meet the legal criteria for mental retardation in 1988, more than a decade before the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited the practice nationwide.
Hill's problem is that a judge found him more likely than not to be mentally disabled. Georgia's law requires capital defendants to clear a far more difficult legal threshold — proving it beyond a reasonable doubt.
The State Board of Pardons and Paroles will hear Hill's clemency request Friday for a sentence of life in prison without parole. Meanwhile, state and national advocacy groups for people with developmental disabilities are urging the board to commute his death sentence.
"As Georgia has recognized for almost a quarter of a century, it would be inhumane to execute Warren Hill," Rita Young and Lesa Hope, from All About Developmental Disabilities in Decatur, wrote the board.
In their own letter to the parole board, former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn said Hill's execution "would undermine the state of Georgia's historic leadership in promoting the rights of the developmentally challenged."
The parole board has not said when it would issue its decision.
And:
In a June 18 letter to the parole board, Handspike's nephew, Richard Handspike, said prosecutors did not contact the Handspike family about the decision to seek the death penalty. If they had, the family would have opposed it, he wrote.
Handspike also told the board his family "feels strongly that persons with any kind of significant mental disabilities should not be put to death. ... We do not want Mr. Hill to be executed and we believe a sentence of life without the possibility of parole is an appropriate and just resolution of this case."
"Case highlights strict Ga. execution standard," is Kate Brumback's AP filing, via the Boston Globe.
Georgia was the first state to ban executing mentally disabled death row inmates, but the case of an inmate who is to be put to death next week has highlighted the state's strictest-in-the-nation standard for proving mental disability.
Former President Jimmy Carter is among those who have said the state pardons board should commute Warren Lee Hill's death sentence to life in prison without parole. However, the state argues defense attorneys have failed to meet their burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Hill is mentally disabled. Hill was convicted of the 1991 murder of a fellow inmate.
Most states that impose the death penalty have a lower threshold for defendants to prove they are mentally disabled, while some states don't set standards at all. Hill's lawyer Brian Kammer said the high standard for proving mental disability is problematic because psychiatric diagnoses are subject to a degree of uncertainty that is virtually impossible to overcome.
Prosecutors have presented expert testimony and evidence that Hill is not disabled, while his attorneys have presented their own evidence to prove he is disabled. That can make it difficult to determine anything beyond a reasonable doubt, said Kay Levine, an associate professor of law at Emory University.
"Beyond a reasonable doubt can never be met if you're simply not sure which side is unequivocally telling the truth and which side is not," said Levine, who has no connection to the Hill case. "The issue with Georgia setting its mental health standard as high as it's set is that it requires such a high level of certainty that even scientists will rarely reach."
Nonetheless, Georgia's strict standard has repeatedly been upheld by state and federal courts.
And:
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles is set to hear Hill's case Friday. His lawyer has asked the board to commute Hill's sentence to life in prison without parole or to grant him a 90-day delay to allow the U.S. Supreme Court to consider his case.
Included with the application to the board are letters from former President Carter and his wife, disability groups and the nephew of Joseph Handspike, the inmate Hill killed.
Richard Handspike, who says he is a representative for the family, says in the letter that they were not contacted by prosecutors but would have told authorities they did not want Hill to be executed.
"I and my family feel strongly that persons with any kind of significant mental disabilities should not be put to death," Handspike said. "I believe that if the system had evidence of such disability in Mr. Hill, it should have taken steps to treat him accordingly and prevent his execution."
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