Warren Lee Hill’s execution rescheduled for July 15 (Update)

‘Mr. Hill has no recourse left but to beg the nation’s highest court to intervene’

Image

Death-row inmate Warren Lee Hill is scheduled to die in less than two weeks.

Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens has announced that Hill, a mentally-disabled inmate sentenced to die for killing fellow inmate Joseph Handspike in 1991, will be executed on Monday, July 15.

The announcement comes five months after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Georgia Court granted Hill two stays of execution, temporarily delaying his execution with less than 30 minutes to go before his scheduled death. The decision was so close to the deadline that Hill had already consumed his final meal.

Brian Kammer, one of Hill’s lawyers, has previously told CL that a U.S. Supreme Court intervention is “one of the last things that’s possible” to spare the inmate’s life.

“All experts who have evaluated Warren Hill agree: he is mentally retarded,” Kammer said in a statement. “Mr. Hill’s execution would therefore be a grotesque miscarriage of justice and render the Eighth Amendment a mere paper tiger. This case presents the extraordinary circumstance where an individual who is ineligible for a capital sentence is about to be executed. Mr. Hill has no recourse left but to beg the nation’s highest court to intervene, and we trust and hope that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear his plea.”

Hill’s attorneys filed for a petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus at the U.S. Supreme Court in late May based on the unanimous agreement from doctors who have examined Hill that he is mentally retarded. That legal move followed the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in April to deny a habeas petition from Hill, which would have further postponed his execution, based on what Kammer called “procedural barriers.”

Olens had asked the Federal Court of Appeals in Atlanta to vacate its stay following the February decision. At the time, Kammer said the stays “may only be temporary” and would hinge on whether the inmate could litigate a second federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

For now, Hill will have to wait and see whether the U.S. Supreme Court will hear his case.

“I trust that the Supreme Court will not allow this egregious miscarriage of justice to occur,” Kammer tells CL

UPDATE, Monday, July 8, 2013: Warren Hill’s lawyers have filed a motion for a stay of execution with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. You can read the full motion here. Below is an short excerpt:

The issues at stake in the Petition currently pending in the Supreme Court are clearly of the highest significance and involve the highest stakes. The Supreme Court should be given the time it needs to determine the appropriate resolution to this extraordinary case.