Georgia Rejects Clemency - Set to Execute Mentally Disabled Black Man Tmw Despite Court Ruling

From [HERE] The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday rejected a clemency bid by death row inmate Warren Hill who was convicted of two counts of murder but argues he should not be executed because he is mentally disabled. The pardons board rejected Hill's clemency petition with little comment. "After considering the request, the Board has voted to deny clemency," it said in a statement. The board acknowledged that Hill had exhausted his habeas corpus proceedings in both the state and federal court systems. His attorneys have argued at all stages that Hill should not have received the death penalty because he suffers from a form of mental retardation , and they presented evidence of such limitation at a pardon hearing last Friday. Georgia was the first state to ban the execution of mentally disabled individuals, but the disability must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Hill is scheduled to die by lethal injection July 18.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, were among those who wrote to the state Board of Pardons and Paroles requesting clemency for Warren Lee Hill, who is set to die by lethal injection on Wednesday.  Hill, 52, was sentenced to death for killing a fellow prisoner, Joseph Handspike, in 1990. At the time he was already serving a life sentence for the 1986 murder of his girlfriend, Myra Wright.

Neither of the juries at his two trials were told that Hill had an IQ of about 70, that he came from a violent home or that from a very young age had displayed signs of learning disabilities. In November 2002 a judge in a Georgia court found Hill to be "mentally retarded" – the label for learning disabilities that is still used widely in the US among official circles.

The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled in Atkins v. Virginia [opinion; Cornell LII backgrounder] that the execution of mentally retarded individuals is cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment [text]. However, in 29 states, including Texas, Tennessee and New Jersey [JURIST reports], the defendant still carries the burden of proving mental retardation in death-penalty [JURIST news archive] cases to receive a lesser sentence. Guest columnist Olga Vlasova argues [JURIST op-ed] that the Supreme Court should prohibit the death penalty for severely mentally ill offenders. Internationally, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon [official profile] has called on all member states to abolish capital punishment entirely