A two-time killer was denied a last-minute reprieve by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday night after he challenged Georgia's uniquely strict standard for intellectual disability.
 |
| Warren Lee Hill |
The execution of Warren Lee Hill for the 1990 murder of a fellow prison inmate was carried out at 7:55 pm in Jackson, Georgia.
Warren Lee Hill's lawyers claimed the 54-year-old had the mental capacity of a child — but the state said that wasn't proven beyond a reasonable doubt, as it requires.
"Today, the Court has unconscionably allowed a grotesque miscarriage of justice to occur in Georgia," Hill's lawyer, Brian Kammer said after the ruling. "Georgia has been allowed to execute an unquestionably intellectually disabled man, Warren Hill, in direct contravention of the Court's clear precedent prohibiting such cruelty."
Hill's lawyers had hoped a Supreme Court ruling last year on Florida's standard for disability could be used to show that Georgia's standards is unconstitutional. The justices rejected that argument with two dissents.
Hill was sentenced to death for the fatal beating of a fellow inmate in 1990.
He was already serving a life sentence for murdering his girlfriend five years earlier.
His lethal injection was first scheduled in 2012 and had been postponed three times for various appeals.
"This execution is an abomination," Kammer added. "Like the execution of Jerome Bowden in 1986, the memory of Mr. Hill's illegal execution will live on as a moral stain on the people of this State and on the courts that allowed this to happen."
Warren Lee Hill's lawyers claimed the 54-year-old had the mental capacity of a child — but the state said that wasn't proven beyond a reasonable doubt, as it requires.
"Today, the Court has unconscionably allowed a grotesque miscarriage of justice to occur in Georgia," Hill's lawyer, Brian Kammer said after the ruling. "Georgia has been allowed to execute an unquestionably intellectually disabled man, Warren Hill, in direct contravention of the Court's clear precedent prohibiting such cruelty."
Hill's lawyers had hoped a Supreme Court ruling last year on Florida's standard for disability could be used to show that Georgia's standards is unconstitutional. The justices rejected that argument with two dissents.
Hill was sentenced to death for the fatal beating of a fellow inmate in 1990.
He was already serving a life sentence for murdering his girlfriend five years earlier.
His lethal injection was first scheduled in 2012 and had been postponed three times for various appeals.
"This execution is an abomination," Kammer added. "Like the execution of Jerome Bowden in 1986, the memory of Mr. Hill's illegal execution will live on as a moral stain on the people of this State and on the courts that allowed this to happen."
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento
Nota. Solo i membri di questo blog possono postare un commento.