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Tennessee Denies Clemency to Blind Prisoner, Permits His Execution Without Reviewing Juror’s Admission That She Was Biased Against Him

The state of Tennessee is preparing to execute a blind death-row prisoner on December 5, 2019, without providing him judicial review of a legal claim that led the state’s courts to overturn the conviction of a former death-row prisoner just weeks before.

Citing what he characterized as “extensive” judicial review spanning “the course of almost 30 years,” Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced on December 4 that he had denied clemency to Lee Hall (pictured). That review, Governor Lee said, included “additional review and rulings by the Tennessee Supreme Court” in the past week. In those rulings, the Tennessee court refused to consider evidence that a juror in Hall’s case had failed to disclose that she had been raped and physically abused by her ex-husband and “hated” Hall, whose case involved domestic violence, as a result. Less than two weeks earlier, the Tennessee courts had granted a new trial to Hubert Glenn Sexton because a juror in his 2001 death-penalty trial had similarly failed to disclose her history of domestic abuse.

“The judgment and sentence stand based on [the court] rulings,” Governor Lee said, “and I will not intervene in this case.”

Hall’s case also attracted attention because of his physical disability and frailty. Hall “is blind and vulnerable,” his lawyers wrote in an unsuccessful motion to stay his execution, and “[t]he spectacle of his execution — guiding him to the gurney — would ‘offend humanity.’” Hall, they said, “bears no practical risk of harm to anyone” if imprisoned “for the remainder of his natural life.”

Hall was convicted and sentenced to death in 1992 for the murder of his estranged girlfriend. He lost his sight as a result of glaucoma, which his lawyers say was not properly treated while he was on death row. Hall would be the second blind person executed in the United States since capital punishment resumed in the United States in the 1990s. California executed Clarence Ray Allen, a 76-year-old blind man, in 2006. In 1988, Montana Governor Ted Schwinden commuted the death sentence of David Cameron Keith, in part because of his partial paralysis and blindness.

Lawyers for Federal Death-Row Prisoner Say Schizophrenia, Brain Injuries, and Dementia Have Left Him Incompetent to Be Executed

Lawyers for federal death-row prisoner Wesley Purkey, who is scheduled to be executed on December 13, 2019, say he is incompetent to be executed because he has Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and traumatic brain injuries that "render him unable to rationally understand the reason the United States seeks to execute him.”

Purkey’s complaint, filed November 26, 2019 in federal district court in Washington, catalogues a lifelong history of trauma and mental illness that have contributed to his current condition. He experienced sexual, physical, and emotional abuse beginning at age 5, and began using alcohol and drugs as a child. He has been diagnosed with numerous mental illnesses, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and depression, and has multiple documented suicide attempts. He has also suffered several brain injuries resulting in damage to his frontal lobe that “limits his capacity to regulate his thoughts, emotion, and behavior, which has deteriorated significantly over time.” Now, his complaint says, he is also suffering from dementia as a result of Alzheimer’s disease.

In February 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing a person who, because of conditions such as mental illness or dementia, “cannot rationally understand his punishment, or the reason for it” constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Purkey’s complaint presents reports from two medical experts that his dementia and other mental illnesses interfere with his cognitive functioning, including his ability to cooperate with his attorneys and to rationally understand why he is to be executed. “The underlying brain damage and mental illness he has are long-standing, irreversible, and will continue to deteriorate as his dementia progresses,” wrote Dr. Bhushan S. Agharkar. Purkey believes that there is a conspiracy against him and that he is being executed because his legal efforts to improve prison conditions have made him a “hassle” to the government.

“Wes Purkey is a severely brain-damaged and mentally ill man who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease,” Rebecca Woodman, one of Mr. Purkey’s attorneys, said in a statement. “He has long accepted responsibility for the crime that put him on death row, but as his dementia has progressed, he no longer has a rational understanding of why the government plans to execute him. He believes his execution is part of a large-scale conspiracy against him by the federal government in retaliation for his frequent challenges to prison conditions, and he believes his own lawyers are working against him within this conspiracy.... The Eighth Amendment prohibits executing someone who, like Wes, lacks a rational understanding of the basis for his execution, and the court must not allow the execution to go forward unless and until it can confirm that Mr. Purkey has this understanding.”

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Tennessee Denies Clemency to Blind Prisoner, Permits His Execution Without Reviewing Juror’s Admission That She Was Biased Against Him

Lawyers for Federal Death-Row Prisoner Say Schizophrenia, Brain Injuries, and Dementia Have Left Him Incompetent to Be Executed

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