© Wikimedia CommonsPhoto of Georgia Governor Nathan.
A death row prisoner in Georgia
who has been officially deemed by the courts to be "mentally retarded" is scheduled to be executed next week despite a supreme court ruling that bans the death sentence for people with learning difficulties.The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles was due to hear a clemency appeal on behalf of the prisoner, Warren Hill, on Friday and has the power to commute his death penalty to life without parole.
But should the five-member board decide to dismiss his plea, Hill will be executed by lethal injection at 7pm on Wednesday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson in a move that could pit Georgia against the clear will of the supreme court, the highest judicial panel in the nation.
"We are heading into a constitutional crisis," Hill's lawyer, Brian Kammer, said. "The supreme court banned executions of mentally retarded prisoners, but here we are in Georgia about to execute a man who is mentally retarded."
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 murdering 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 judge's finding was made just a few months after the supreme court, in Atkins v Virginia, ruled that executions of individuals with learning disabilities violated the eight amendment of the US constitution that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
Despite the supreme court ban, Hill has fallen into a legal trap that could send him to his death next Wednesday. Georgia is the only state in the country that requires prisoners seeking to avoid execution to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they are "mentally retarded".
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