Warren Hill is set to be executed Tuesday night.
Georgia's Board of Pardons and Paroles voted Tuesday to deny clemency to Warren Hill, a death row inmate set to be executed this evening despite numerous findings that he suffers from an intellectual disability.
AP Photo/Georgia Dept. of Corrections
Hill, who has an IQ of approximately 70, was serving a life sentence for the 1985 murder of his girlfriend when he killed fellow inmate Joseph Handspike in 1990. He was then sentenced to death for Handspike's murder.
The Parole Board met on Monday to consider his last minute appeal, but announced Tuesday it had voted to deny clemency. He is set to be executed by lethal injection at 7 p.m. ET at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.
"The clemency board missed an opportunity to right a grave wrong," Hill's attorney Brian Kammer said in a statement.
"According to every doctor who has ever examined him, Mr. Hill has intellectual disability. Mr. Hill's disability means that he has the emotional and cognitive functioning of an 11 year old boy," Kammer said.
In the 2002 case of Atkins v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing intellectually disabled inmates violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. However, Georgia has an exceptionally high burden of proof, with defendants required to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that they have an intellectual disability.
Kammer called this burden of proof "unscientific" and "extreme."
"Mr. Hill's execution cannot be permitted to proceed," Kammer said. "It is illegal, and it is a violation of the fundamental rights of persons with developmental disabilities to society's protection."
Kammer said has filed a petition for a writ of certiorari and a motion for stay of execution in the U.S. Supreme Court.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/15Pk6oe
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