A mentally ill US prisoner was executed by lethal injection in Georgia, prison officials announced.

"Death chamber" at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. A mentally ill US prisoner was executed by lethal injection in Georgia, prison officials announced late Tuesday. (AFP/Paul Buck)

James Willie Brown, 55, sentenced for the 1975 rape and murder of Brenda Watson, was declared dead at 8:32 pm (0132 GMT Wednesday), a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Corrections said.

Brown had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia 17 times, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. A judge determined in 1981, nonetheless, that he was eligible to die for his crimes.

Some 58 death row inmates have now been executed since the start of the year in the United States, according to DPIC figures.

Two other mentally ill prisoners are also facing execution in North Carolina, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty said.

Joseph Keel is scheduled for execution on November 7. He was sentenced to death in 1990 for the murder of his father-in-law.

Keel suffers from a personality disorder stemming from multiple brain injuries, ranging from pre-natal to a workplace accident, when he was struck on the head with a 725-kilogram (1,600-pound) steel beam.

Another prisoner, John Dennis Daniels, was sentenced to die in 1990 for the murder of a woman. Daniels is to die November 14, despite psychiatrists' testimony that he has the intellectual development of an 11- or 12-year-old child, the coalition said in a statement.

Copyright 2003 AFP

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