The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected condemned inmate Warren Hill’s bid to halt his execution on grounds is mentally retarded.
Hill’s case attracted the attention of the nation’s disability rights community when three state experts who initially testified that Hill was faking his intellectual disabilities changed their diagnoses. In sworn statements, the experts described their evaluations 13 years ago as rush jobs and say a better understanding today of mental disabilities lead them to believe Hill has mild retardation and is ineligible to be executed.
The high court’s refusal to hear Hill’s plea for mercy means the experts’ new testimony cannot be used by Hill’s lawyers. His execution, however, remains on hold while the Georgia Supreme Court considers Hill’s challenge to a new state law that keeps secret the identities of those who make and supply the state’s lethal-injection drugs.
Hill sits on death row for beating an inmate, Joseph Handspike, to death with a nail-studded board in 1990 at a state prison in Leesburg. At the time, Hill was serving a life sentence for the 1986 fatal shooting of his former girlfriend.
In 1988, Georgia became the first state in the country to ban the execution of the mentally retarded. Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the practice nationwide.
Georgia is the only state that requires capital defendants to prove mental retardation beyond a reasonable doubt — the most difficult burden of proof.
The last evidentiary hearing on Hill’s mental retardation claims occurred in December 2000. The three state experts testified they believed Hill was malingering, while four defense experts said they believed Hill was mentally retarded. A state judge found that Hill had shown he was mentally retarded by a preponderance of the evidence — or more likely than not — but had fallen short of proving it beyond a reasonable doubt.
With the new testimony from the former state experts, Hill’s lawyers say they believe they can now meet Georgia’s strict standard. They had asked the high court to either throw out Hill’s death sentence or allow a federal judge to hear the new testimony. Hill’s petition was supported in court filings by leading mental health clinicians and scholars and by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.
Brian Kammer, one of Hill’s attorneys, said he was “gravely disappointed” the court denied the petition.
“It is the unanimous opinion of all doctors who have examined him that Mr. Hill is a person with mental retardation,” Kammer said. “ … It is tragic that our highest court has failed to enforce its own command that persons with mental retardation are categorically ineligible for the death penalty.”
Eric Jacobson, executive director for the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities, agreed.
“It’s completely untenable that Warren Hill could now be put to death basically on a technicality because the courts won’t acknowledge a mistake was made and rectify the situation,” he said. “As a disability community, we will continue to push to get the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ language changed in Georgia. This must not happen again.”
A spokeswoman for state Attorney General Sam Olens said her office had no comment on the high court’s decision. In court filings, state attorneys insist Hill’s mental retardation claims are without merit. Hill functions above the level of a mentally disabled person and, while serving in the Navy, he was a marksman and a dedicated and reliable petty officer, the filings said.
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