Georgia’s next scheduled execution Tuesday has drawn national and international attention because of findings that the inmate, Warren Lee Hill, is intellectually disabled.
This will be the fourth time Hill will have been prepared for death by lethal injection, and his last hopes Monday rest with the state Board of Pardons and Parole, or last-minute intervention by a federal appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court.
There is no doubt that Hill murdered two people on separate occasions, but the question is whether the state can legally execute a man who has an IQ of 70. That is a nationally-recognized benchmark for intellectual disability. Georgia was the first state to prohibit executing the intellectually disabled but its standard of proof is the most difficult to reach — beyond a reasonable doubt. All the other death-penalty states require only proof that an inmate is more likely than not intellectual disabled, or proof by a preponderance of evidence
“Georgia is about to execute someone with mentality of an 11-year-old — a young boy in man’s body,” said Hill’s attorney Brian Kammer.
Lee County prosecutor Plez Hardin disputes that. He points out that Hill held jobs as a teenager to help support his family, graduated from high school and was a marksman and petty officer in the Navy. Hardin said Hill was evaluated before and after his trial.
“He only started malingering or showing signs of mental retardation many years into his appeals,” Hardin said. “It’s very clear he’s not mentally retarded.”
In the past 2 1/2 years as Hill has come close to execution, groups like the European Union, the American Bar Association and the American Association on Intellectual and Development Disabilities, and international media have lobbied for him to be spared, arguing that Georgia law makes it too hard, if not impossible, for him to prove he is intellectually disabled. Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, have written letters urging that he not be executed.
All the while, his death sentence has remained intact even though two state court judges who heard his appeals found Hill to be intellectually disabled, but only by a preponderance of the evidence. And three experts who testified for the prosecution in the 1991 trial have changed their opinions and said Hill is intellectually disabled beyond a reasonable doubt.
Neither Hill nor his second victim, Joseph Handspike, are sympathetic characters.
Hill was in prison for the 1986 shooting death his 18-year-old girlfriend when he used a nail-studded board to beat Handspike. At the time of the 1990 attack, Handspike was also in prison for murder, and he was known as a sexual predator. Hill claimed he murdered his sleeping cellmate because Handspike had threatened to sexually assault him.
Even as he waits for the death sentence to be carried out, Hill has unresolved appeals before courts.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is weighing a request that Hill be allowed a second round of appeals.
At the same time, Kammer has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to also consider Hill’s case in light of a ruling by the justices last spring in a Florida case. The high court ruled in May states cannot solely rely on intelligence test scores when deciding whether a murderer is eligible to be executed. The justices said IQ tests are imprecise and contain a margin of error, creating a risk that an inmate with a borderline intellectual disability will be wrongfully put to death.
Kammer said he will stress that same U.S. Supreme Court ruling when he goes before the Parole Board on Monday.
“The courts are conflicted,” Kammer said “There’s a moral conflict here that’s playing out in the courts.”
Hill’s three scheduled executions in 2012 and 2013 were stopped with hours to spare by state and federal courts to allow time to consider arguments about the drugs used to put those convicted to death and about his disability.
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