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WASHINGTON
- October 31 - The next three scheduled executions in the
United States - one in Georgia and two in North Carolina - involve
men whose severe mental illness should make them ineligible for the death
penalty, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty said today.
The scheduled executions come on the heels of a report by a national
organization that found that prison systems increasingly are
masquerading as mental health facilities - except that many more
people in prison do not receive treatment. The group, Human Rights Watch,
found that one in every six people in prison in the United States is
mentally ill, with many suffering from such illnesses as schizophrenia,
bipolar disorder and major depression. The report found that there are
three times as many men and women with mental illness in prisons in
the United States as there are in mental health hospitals.
Another organization, the National Mental Health Association, the nation's
oldest and largest organization that conducts research on mental illness,
estimates that some 370 people with severe mental illness are warehoused
on death rows in the United States - just more than one in every ten
people on death row.
Brian Roberts, NCADP executive director, said executing people who
are not fully culpable for their actions constitutes a gross human
rights violation. "Personal culpability must be taken into consideration
when holding people accountable for their actions," Roberts said."People with severe mental illness, just like people with mental
retardation and juvenile offenders, cannot be regarded as culpable
as fully functioning adults. It is important to recognize that those
chosen for execution in this country tend to reside on the very edge
of society's margins - and that includes people with severe mental
illness."
During the next two and a half weeks, three people with severe mental
illness are scheduled for execution. They are:
***James Willie Brown, Nov. 4, Georgia. Brown is scheduled to be
executed for the 1975 rape and murder of Brenda Sue Watson in Gwinnet
County. Brown, who has been diagnosed no fewer than 17 times as having
severe paranoid schizophrenia, originally was found incompetent to
stand trial for Watson's murder. In 1981, he was found competent to
stand trial and was convicted and sentenced to death. In 1988, that
conviction was overturned due to Brown's mental illness. In 1991, Brown
was retried and again sentenced to death, largely on the perjured
testimony of a witness who said Brown was "faking" his mental illness.
That witness since has recanted her sworn testimony.
***Joseph Keel, Nov. 7, North Carolina. Keel was sentenced to death for
the 1990 murder of John Simmons, his father-in-law in Edgecombe County.
Keel suffers from borderline personality disorder, suicidal tendencies
and organic personality disorder, which is caused by traumatic brain
injuries and is characterized by extreme mood swings, aggression,
impaired judgment, apathy or paranoia and depression. Under North Carolina
law, a person cannot be convicted of capital murder if he or she does not
have the mental capacity to form intent, to premeditate or to
deliberate. Despite the requirements set out by North Carolina law,
Joseph Keel's lawyers did not present to the jury any evidence regarding
his mental illness or mental capacity to the jury during the guilt/innocence
phase of the trial. Keel has been barred from pursuing ineffective
assistance of counsel claims in his appeals because, ironically, a
post-conviction lawyer missed the deadline for filing such appeals.
***John Dennis Daniels, Nov. 14, North Carolina. Daniels was sentenced
to death for the 1990 murder of Isabelle Daniels Crawford of Mecklenburg
County. Psychiatrists found that Daniels possessed "the emotional and
social development of an eleven or twelve-year-old child...his
ability to think or evaluate his behavior would have been compromised
to the point of being inconsequential."
The North Carolina scheduled executions come at a time when the state
Senate has approved a moratorium on executions, with similar legislation
expected to come up in the House next year. In addition, according
to a recent scientific survey, support for the death penalty in North
Carolina is at an all-time low, with a plurality of North Carolina
residents favoring a moratorium. Nonetheless, North Carolina ranks
third in the United States in executions this year, behind Texas
and Oklahoma.
NCADP is urging its members and allies to contact Georgia and
North Carolina officials to protest the scheduled executions. To take action,
visit NCADP's Legislative Action Center at www.ncadp.org
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