July 18
TEXAS----execution
Texas executes its 1st inmate using single drug
A 33-year-old Texas man convicted of carjacking and fatally shooting a suburban
Dallas stockbroker was put to death Wednesday, becoming the 1st prisoner in the
nation's most active capital punishment state to be executed with a single
lethal drug.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials announced last week they were
modifying the 3-drug execution procedure used since 1982 because the state's
supply of one of the drugs — the muscle relaxant pancuronium bromide — has
expired. Yokamon Hearn was executed Wednesday evening using a single dose of
the sedative pentobarbital, which had been part of the 3-drug mixture since
last year.
Ohio, Arizona, Idaho and Washington have already adopted a single-drug
procedure, and this week Georgia said it would do so, too.
Hearn showed no apparent unusual reaction to the drug as his execution began.
He was pronounced dead at 6:37 p.m., about 25 minutes after the lethal dose
began flowing.
Asked by the warden if he wanted to make statement, he said: "I'd like to tell
my family, I love you and I wish you all well. I'm ready."
Hearn was condemned for the March 1998 slaying of Frank Meziere, 23. About 3½
hours before Hearn's punishment, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals to
halt it. None of the appeals addressed the change in the state's execution drug
policy.
Evidence showed Meziere, of Plano, was cleaning his black convertible Mustang
at a self-service car wash in Dallas when Hearn, then 19, and his friends
approached. They forced Meziere at gunpoint into his own car and drove him to
an industrial area in a south Dallas neighborhood, where he was shot 10 times
in the head.
Hearn, known to his friends as "Yogi," already had a lengthy record that
included burglary, robbery, assault, sexual assault and weapons possession.
In 1 appeal, Hearn's lawyers argued that his mother drank alcohol when she was
pregnant, stunting his neurological development and leaving him with mental
impairments that disqualify him from execution under earlier Supreme Court
rulings. Testing shows Hearn's IQ is too high for him to be considered mentally
impaired.
In another, his appeals lawyers claimed the trial attorneys who handled his
initial appeals failed to investigate his background and uncover evidence of
his alleged mental impairment and troubled childhood.
Before the Supreme Court issued brief 1-paragraph rulings rejecting his 2
appeals, Richard Burr, one of Hearn's lawyers, had acknowledged "a degree of
hope, but still, it'll be tough."
State attorneys contested the appeals, arguing that information about Hearn's
background and upbringing had been "thoroughly investigated and addressed at
trial" and that the evidence "does not substantiate any scenario other than
that of Hearn's guilt."
Georgette Oden, an assistant Texas attorney general, argued Hearn's latest
appeal was improperly filed this week by circumventing lower courts and that it
should have been filed years ago.
Hearn declined to speak with reporters in the weeks leading up to his
execution. In 2004, he avoided the death chamber when a federal court agreed
his mental impairment claims should be reviewed and halted his execution less
than an hour before its scheduled time.
Jason January, the former Dallas County assistant district attorney who
prosecuted Hearn for capital murder, said to stop the punishment because of
fetal alcohol syndrome "would be a free pass for anyone whose parents drank."
"No question he had a tough background, but a lot of people have tough
backgrounds and work their way out and don't fill someone's head with 10
bullets," he said.
One of Hearn's accomplices received life in prison. 2 others got 10-year
sentences.
Hearn becomes the 6th condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas this year
and the 483rd overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7,
1982. At least 8 other Texas prisoners have execution dates in the coming
months, including 3 in August.
Hearn becomes the 24th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA
and the 1301st overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
Condemned inmates are scheduled to be put to death in Georgia, Arizona,
Oklahoma and Louisiana between July 23 and August 15.
(sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin)
GEORGIA:
URGENT ACTION APPEAL - From Amnesty International USA
----------------------------------
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa19712.pdf
Further information on UA 197/12 (10 July 2012)
Issue Date: 18 July 2012
Country: USA
CLEMENCY DENIED, EXECUTION RESCHEDULED
The authorities in Georgia have reset the execution of Warren Hill from 18 July
to 23 July. The parole board has denied clemency despite the prisoner having a
mental disability serious enough to leave the constitutionality of his
execution in real doubt.
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles met on 13 July to consider Warren
Hill’s clemency petition. On 16 July, they announced that they had voted to
deny clemency. As is the Board’s usual practice, they gave no detail about the
decision.
On 17 July, the day before Warren Hill was scheduled to be executed, the
Georgia Department of Corrections announced that, with immediate effect, the
prison authorities were switching from a three-drug lethal injection process to
a one-drug protocol. In executions under this new protocol, the prisoner would
be injected with an overdose of the sedative pentobarbital. The announcement
stated that the Department of Corrections had been using pentobarbital in its
three-drug process, and that “based upon the experience of other states and
competent medical testimony, the drug has proven to be effective.”
Please write immediately in English or your own language:
- Express regret at the Board’s decision to deny clemency;
- Express concern that Georgia plans to execute a person whom a state judge has
found to have mental retardation;
- Calling on the Board to reconsider its decision and to commute Warren Hill’s
death sentence.
PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 23 JULY 2012 TO:
State Board of Pardons and Paroles
Email: [email protected] and [email protected]
Fax: 1 404 651 8502
Salutation: Dear Board members
Please check with AIUSA Urgent Action Office if sending appeals after the above
date.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Warren Hill was sentenced to death in 1991 for the 1990 murder of a fellow
prisoner. In 1996 his lawyers submitted an appeal against his death sentence,
claiming he had “mental retardation”. Georgia’s legislature had passed a law in
1988 prohibiting the imposition of the death penalty on anyone found “beyond a
reasonable doubt” to have “mental retardation”. The law defined this disability
as the offender having “significantly sub-average general intellectual
functioning,” resulting in “impairments in adaptive behavior,” which
“manifested during the developmental period”. In 2002 a state trial-level judge
found that Warren Hill indeed had “significantly sub-average general
intellectual functioning”, but that he had not, beyond a reasonable doubt,
proved his adaptive deficits.
The US Supreme Court then ruled, in Atkins v. Virginia, that the execution of
people with mental retardation violates the US Constitution. Warren Hill’s
lawyers moved for reconsideration of his claim in the light of the Atkins
ruling. This time the trial-level court decided that the standard of proof for
determining if he had mental retardation should be “a preponderance of the
evidence” – not the higher “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard – and that
under this lower standard, Warren Hill’s impairment did indeed amount to mental
retardation. However, the state authorities appealed to the Georgia Supreme
Court which in 2003 ruled by four votes to three that the “beyond a reasonable
doubt” standard was acceptable in this context. The majority reasoned that the
US Supreme Court had left it up to individual states to decide how to comply
with Atkins, and had not specified what the burden of proof for determining
mental retardation should be. Warren Hill’s case was sent back to the lower
court which reinstated its original 2002 ruling that under the “beyond a
reasonable doubt” standard, he did not have mental retardation.
In 2010, a three-judge panel of the federal Court of Appeals for the 11th
Circuit ruled 2-1 that “because Georgia’s requirement of proof beyond a
reasonable doubt necessarily will result in the execution of the mentally
retarded, the Georgia Supreme Court’s decision is contrary to the clearly
established rule of Atkins”. However, the state appealed for a rehearing in
front of the full 11th Circuit, and in 2011 the full court ruled, seven to
four, that, even if Georgia had “somehow inappropriately struck the balance” in
its statute, US law prevented a federal court from acting even if it considered
the state Supreme Court’s decision upholding that law to be “incorrect or
unwise”.
No other US state requires proof of mental retardation "beyond a reasonable
doubt in the death penalty context. Indeed, 22 of the USA’s 33 current death
penalty states, and the federal government, utilize the “preponderance of the
evidence” standard, under which the Georgia judge found Warren Hill to have
mental retardation.
Name: Warren Lee Hill (m)
Issues: Death penalty
---------------------------------
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Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and
defends human rights.
This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact
information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with
this appeal.
Urgent Action Network
Amnesty International USA
600 Pennsylvania Ave SE 5th fl
Washington DC 20003
Email: [email protected]
http://www.amnestyusa.org/uan
Phone: 202.509.8193
Fax: 202.675.8566
----------------------------------
END OF URGENT ACTION APPEAL
----------------------------------
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