Source: https://standdown.typepad.com/weblog/amicus/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 06:01:48+00:00

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The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) filed an amicus brief today, along with three Florida mental health organizations, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution of John Ferguson, a man with a long history of severe mental illness, who is on Florida's death row and scheduled for execution on Monday, Aug. 5.
The amicus brief can be viewed at www.nami.org/ferguson.
The amicus brief explains that Ferguson's execution would violate the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because the Florida Supreme Court failed to apply the Supreme Court case, Panetti v. Quarterman (2007), that requires an individual to have a rational understanding of why he is being put to death and the effect of the death penalty.
"The death penalty is not constitutionally allowable as a punishment for John Ferguson because his delusions prevent him from understanding the nature of what is happening to him," said Ron Honberg, J.D., NAMI's national director of policy and legal affairs.
"The constitutional principle does not excuse his crimes, but it does point to life without parole as the appropriate sentence."
Ferguson has a documented 40-year history of profound mental illness, including multiple diagnoses by state doctors in state institutions. He suffers from psychotic hallucinations, including the belief that he is the "Prince of God," that he cannot be killed, and his body will not remain in a grave. He believes he will rise up after his execution and fight alongside Jesus to save America from a communist plot.
Along with NAMI, state organizations filing the amicus brief with are NAMI Florida, the Florida Psychiatric Society and the Florida Psychological Association. The amici members have participated in competency hearings and have a strong interest in having the courts apply the correct legal standards for mental competence.
The Florida Supreme Court applied an outdated, unconstitutional standard and held that it was sufficient to show that Ferguson had a mere factual awareness of his execution. But the U.S. Supreme Court in Panetti rejected that standard six years ago. U.S. Supreme Court precedent currently requires a showing that individuals have a rational understanding of why they are being put to death and the effect of their execution. Thus, the Florida ruling – which one federal appeals court called "patently incorrect" – is incompatible with the Eighth Amendment.
NAMI is the nation's largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness. NAMI advocates for access to services, treatment, supports and research and is steadfast in its commitment to raising awareness and building a community of hope.
"Executing People With Serious Mental Illness Offends Our Constitution and Our Humanity," is Ronald S. Honberg's essay at Huffington Post. He's the National Director for Policy and Legal Affairs for NAMI.
Mr. Ferguson was first diagnosed with mental illness nearly 50 years ago. He has spent the last 35 of those years on death row in Florida, following convictions for multiple murders. Mr. Ferguson has been in prison since his convictions, and if his death sentence is commuted, he will remain there for the rest of his life to keep the public safe.
But executing him, as the State plans on Monday, August 5, would violate the U.S. Constitution. In Ford v. Wainwright (1986) and Panetti v. Quarterman (2007), the U.S. Supreme Court held that it is cruel and unusual punishment to execute a person who is insane and lacks a rational understanding of why he is being put to death and the effect of the death penalty.
In fact, states have been prohibited from executing people who are insane since the founding of our nation. It was a principle the colonists carried over from centuries of English common law. In 1680, the English jurist Sir Edward Coke explained: "By intendment of Law the execution of the offender is for example... but so it is not when a mad man is executed, but should be a miserable spectacle, both against Law, and of extream inhumanity and cruelty, and can be no example to others."
Some 300 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court observed: "Whether its aim be to protect the condemned from fear and pain without comfort of understanding, or to protect the dignity of society itself from the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance, the restriction [against executing the insane] finds enforcement in the Eighth Amendment."
The ACLU Blog of Rights posts, "Florida Will Kill Severely Mentally Ill Man Unless Supreme Court Intervenes," by Anna Arceneaux.
Unless the United States Supreme Court intervenes in the next few days, Florida will execute John Ferguson on August 5, despite a well-documented history of his psychosis spanning over 40 years.
Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Ferguson believes that he is the "Prince of God" and that after his execution he will be reincarnated in his same body, help Jesus fight the Antichrist, save America from a communist plot, and rule the earth. He thinks his conviction is the result of a communist conspiracy. He is certain that the state seeks to execute him not for his crimes but to prevent him from ascending to sit at God's right hand.
After a traumatic brain injury at age 21, Ferguson spent a decade in and out of mental hospitals. Doctors recommended that he receive long-term hospitalization and treatment. They warned that he should remain hospitalized because he was dangerously mentally ill. Nevertheless, he was ultimately discharged. Within two years, Ferguson was facing trial for multiple murders.
"US groups bid to halt execution of mentally ill man," is the AFP report, via Business Standard.
Medical experts filed a motion to the US Supreme Court today calling for the execution of a mentally ill mass-killer in Florida to be halted.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) said in a statement it had requested that the execution of John Ferguson, sentenced to death for the murders of eight people in the 1970s, be stopped because it violated the constitution.
Ferguson, a paranoid schizophrenic who refers to himself as the "Prince of God", is set to be executed on August 5 at 2200 GMT at Raiford prison.
NAMI has joined with three other organizations -- NAMI Florida, the Florida Psychiatric Society and the Florida Psychological Association -- to call for Ferguson's death sentence to be stayed.
The National Law Journal posts, "Warren Lee Hill's — and the Supreme Court's—Last Chance." It's written by Stephen I. Vladeck and James Liebman. Vladeck is at the American University Washington College of Law; Liebman is at Columbia University. They co-authored an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a group of law professors.
In its 1996 decision in Felker v. Turpin, the U.S. Supreme Court saved Congress from itself, relying on creative legal reasoning to hold that some of the key provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) did not actually raise the serious constitutional questions that they appeared to present. As Felker held, although Congress had meant to foreclose state and federal prisoners from filing most “second-or-successive” habeas petitions (including in some cases in which they had an indisputable claim for relief), that constraint only applied to the lower courts. Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, Felker held, Congress had left intact the Supreme Court’s ancient authority to entertain “original” habeas applications in such cases, i.e., habeas petitions filed initially in the Supreme Court, a practice blessed by Chief Justice John Marshall as early as 1807. Because review of a prisoner’s constitutional claims remained available in at least one judicial forum, Felker ruled, the AEDPA did not implicate either the prisoner’s constitutional right to judicial review or the role of the federal courts as the ultimate arbiters of the Constitution.
As should be clear, Felker’s reasoning works only if the Supreme Court actually exercises its original habeas jurisdiction in appropriate cases. Otherwise, there will be cases in which there is no judicial forum available in which to adjudicate the legality of the state’s taking of liberty and life—the very condition that Felker held to be constitutionally intolerable.
According to the Supreme Court’s rules, its exercise of original jurisdiction requires “exceptional circumstances warrant[ing] the exercise of the Court’s discretionary powers, and…[a showing that] adequate relief cannot be obtained in any other form or from any other court.” If Felker means what it says, then the Supreme Court must grant such relief in the pending case of Warren Lee Hill, Jr.—a Georgia inmate whose execution is currently scheduled for next Monday evening, July 15, and whose case is the rare one that clearly satisfies both prongs of the Supreme Court’s requirements for such relief.
"Coalition of disability advocates fights to end Georgia death penalty," is by Nia Testamark for Morris News Service. It's via Georgia's Rome News-Tribune.
Georgia was the first state to outlaw the death penalty for people with mental retardation; however, the defendant must prove it beyond reasonable doubt, the only state to require such a high standard of proof.
Georgia law requires a series of three tests -- an intelligent-quotient test, adaptive-behavior test and a test during childhood.
There are many activists against Georgia’s “beyond reasonable doubt” requirement. They want to change the law to preponderance of the evidence, which means that it will be based on evidence that suggest retardation instead of tests and more easily proved.
Advocates are working at the legislature with state Rep. Rich Golick, R-Smyrna, who chairs the Non-Civil Judiciary committee, who will have a study session this fall to look at this issue.
Mental retardation is now generally referred to as a developmental or intellectual disability. Because it has a specific meaning with respect to capital cases, I continue to use the older term on the website.
The amicus brief filed with the CCA is in Adobe .pdf format.
The AP report by Juan Lozano is, "Group wants Texas death penalty hearing to resume," via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
An alliance of nearly 60 current and former prosecutors, judges, police chiefs, governors, death row exonerees and crime victims filed a legal brief Wednesday asking Texas' highest criminal court to let an unusual hearing on the constitutionality of the death penalty in the state continue.
The court hearing in Houston was put on hold earlier this month after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a request by prosecutors to stop it.
The hearing, which was halted after two days of testimony, had been ordered by Kevin Fine, a state district judge who is considering a motion in a capital murder case on whether Texas' death penalty statute is unconstitutional.
Fine is a judge in Harris County, which has sent more inmates to the lethal-injection gurney than any other county in the U.S. Texas has more executions than any other U.S. state.
Lawyers for the Houston man who had asked for the hearing say problems with such things as eyewitness identification and evidence offered by informants have created flaws in death penalty prosecutions in Texas and resulted in a risk that innocent people like their client will be executed.
They said the case against their client, John Edward Green Jr., uses some of the same faulty evidentiary procedures that have resulted in others being wrongly convicted. Green, who is awaiting trial, faces a possible death sentence if convicted of fatally shooting a Houston woman during a June 2008 robbery.
Prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney's Office have said the claims being made by Greens' attorneys are well-settled case law and that Fine doesn't have the authority to prevent the state from seeking the death penalty in the case.
In their amicus brief, the group of current and former law enforcement officials, lawmakers, exonerees and crime victims said the hearing was crucial as "confidence in the criminal justice system is shaken when problems go unaddressed."
"The tie that binds this diverse group of citizens together is the profound philosophical and practical concern that the Texas death penalty, as currently applied, unreasonably and substantially risks the conviction and execution of the innocent," wrote Walter Long, the group's attorney.
The group includes former Texas Gov. Mark White; former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening; former Indiana Gov. Joe Kernan; six former federal prosecutors; five former state and federal judges; 12 current state lawmakers from California, Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico and Texas; current and former police chiefs from Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Washington; and six death row exonerees from around the country.
In a statement about the brief, Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos said the hearing in Fine's court is not "the proper forum for this particular constitutional challenge to the law."
The brief, as well as one by Green's attorneys were filed on Wednesday, the deadline the appeals court gave for motions on whether the death penalty hearing should continue. The appeals court did not set a timetable for when it would make a decision.
Brian Rogers writes, "Ex-Gov. White, others seek to revive death-penalty hearing," for today's Houston Chronicle.
State District Judge Kevin Fine began what was to be a two-week hearing about the death penalty Dec. 7, after he declared the death penalty unconstitutional in March, then rescinded his ruling and decided to hear evidence before making his decision.
Two days into that hearing, the Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to reconsider a motion by the Harris County District Attorney's Office to stop the hearing and halted the proceedings until further notice.
Wednesday was the last day to file briefs on whether the hearing should take place.
Earlier coverage begins with the post, "Latest Development in the Green Case."
Attorneys for John Green have issued a news release, "Unusual Alliance of Former Governors, Legislators, Law Enforcement, Former Judges and Prosecutors, Victims and Exonerees Urge Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to Allow Death Penalty Hearing to Proceed: Nearly Sixty Prominent Individuals File Amicus Brief Citing Concerns with Wrongful Convictions in Texas Capital Cases."
Today, a diverse group of nearly sixty prominent individuals from Texas and across the country, including former governors, legislators, law enforcement, former judges and prosecutors, victims, Innocence Network projects, and death row exonerees, filed an amicus brief calling on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) to allow Harris County District Court to continue hearing evidence in Texas v. Green. The unusual alliance submitted the brief (attached) to bring to the attention of the Court their shared concern over the risk of wrongful convictions in death penalty cases.
Earlier this month, the district court had begun a serious examination of the substantial risk of wrongful conviction in the John Edward Green capital case. Two days into the hearing, on December 7, the CCA agreed to reconsider a motion by the Harris County District Attorneys Office and halted the proceedings.
The signatories include: three former governors, including Gov. Mark White (TX), Gov. Parris Glendening (MD) and Gov. Joe Kernan (IN); former prosecutors and law enforcement, including former Dallas Assistant District Attorney James A. Fry, who prosecuted an innocent man exonerated by DNA testing after 27 years, and former Texas Department of Public Safety Commander J. Patrick O’Burke; crime victims including Michele Mallin, who mistakenly identified Timothy Cole, who was posthumously pardoned this year by Governor Rick Perry; legislators, including Texas State Senator Rodney Ellis; and death row exonerees including Anthony Graves, who was freed from Texas’ death row in October after new evidence proved his innocence.
The brief is also co-signed by current and former attorneys general, police chiefs, judges and prosecutors from Texas and states across the country (the complete listing of signatories is in the attached brief).
Before the CCA stayed the hearing on December 7, the district court was prepared to hear testimony regarding the cases of Cameron Todd Willingham and Claude Jones, both executed for crimes that new evidence suggests they did not commit.
The brief cites a nationwide trend away from the death penalty due to concerns about wrongful convictions. The signatories are concerned that “confidence in the criminal justice system is shaken when problems go unaddressed,” and they urge the CCA to allow the district court hearing to continue.
Since 1976, 138 people have been exonerated from death row nationwide. Twelve of them were in Texas. Furthermore, of the first 250 DNA exonerations (in capital and non-capital cases), 40 were in Texas. The Texas v. Green hearing would allow attorneys for Mr. Green to continue to present expert testimony and evidence regarding the substantial risk of wrongful conviction and wrongful execution in his case.
Earlier coverage begins with the post, "Clarence Brandley on the Harris County Hearing."

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