JACKSON, Ga. (AP) — The execution of a Georgia man who killed a fellow prisoner in 1990 was halted Tuesday at the last minute so courts could consider claims that he's mentally disabled and other issues.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted its stay of execution as 52-year-old Warren Lee Hill was being prepared for lethal injection. In a 2-1 decision, a panel of the appeals court said further review is needed of recent affidavits by doctors who changed their minds about Hill's mental capacity.
"In other words, all of the experts — both the State's and the petitioner's — now appear to be in agreement that Hill is in fact mentally retarded," judges in the majority wrote in their order.
Continue reading Georgia execution halted at the last minute
I don't think we should be executing anyone.
It is impossible to appropriately and fairly apply such a sentence given the structural deficiencies and corruption inherent in the US legal system.
It's bad enough that states use excessive bail as a way to extract Guilty pleas. Consider that for a Misdemeanor that may carry a sentence of less than six months, Indiana typically leaves people in jail for at least 4-5 months before they can even get a trial. Even then, it's completely up to the judge to decide whether they get time served.
It has been repeatedly shown that most misdemeanors are either dismissed or end up in a plea deal with relatively light punishment for defendants that can afford bail. Once bailed, the state can no longer pressure you by effectively leaving you incarcerated until you plead guilty to get it over with.
With felony cases that involve the death sentence, it's much more likely to be applied to racial minorities and people who are poor and can't afford a good lawyer than it is to a defendant who is rich. (Being white also helps out a lot...)
In the case of a person who is mentally impaired, there are a trail of cases where the police took advantage of that to trick or scare the person into making a false confession.
The number of cases that the innocence project has challenged successfully should give any decent person a moment to pause and consider if executing even one person who was wrongly convicted is worth it, no matter how many might have deserved it.
Indiana executes less than half a dozen people per year, and pays many millions of dollars to keep the death penalty.
States where the budget is a larger problem than it is here have started abandoning the death sentence on the basis of cost/benefit analysis alone.
Posted by: Ryan | February 20, 2013 at 10:00 PM
If a person is convicted of murder, they should get one appeal and if it is up held, they should be executed with in 24 hours! If this were the case than our crime rate would go down in this country!
Posted by: bill | February 21, 2013 at 07:55 AM
I don't see why the crime rate would go down.
I'd certainly be more deterred by the thought of spending life in prison than the thought of being executed.
Also, many of the people who commit the worst crimes, who almost nobody would argue deserve to live, kill themselves before the police are even on the scene.
Besides, we effectively do have extrajudicial executions, as the LARD recently demonstrated when they burned Christopher Dorner alive.
So cheer up! :)
Posted by: Ryan | February 21, 2013 at 07:13 PM