Georgia Executes Mentally Disabled Man

Man “failed to prove his disability,” execution may have violated the Constitution

Warren Lee Hill,
Photo: Ga. Dept. of Corrections

Warren Lee Hill, Photo: Ga. Dept. of Corrections

Warren Lee Hill murdered his girlfriend in 1985 and was serving a life sentence for that crime. In 1990, while imprisoned, Hill killed again, the victim this time being a fellow inmate. For the second time he killed, he was sentenced to death.

 

With an IQ of only 70, and after being on death row for nearly 25 years, with many postponements of his execution because of the

disability that many experts were certain he had, he was executed on January 27th, 2015, and was pronounced dead at 7:55 PM. He did not make a final statement or eat a final meal, but he did request a final prayer.

 

“Today, the Court has unconscionably allowed a grotesque miscarriage of justice to occur in Georgia,” Hill’s lawyer, Brian Kammer, told reporters. “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.”

 

Per Gawker 2012, right before Hill was originally scheduled to be executed, Brian Kammer said, “If Warren Hill is executed, I think it would mean that Georgia no longer takes seriously what had been an admirable commitment to protecting the mentally [disabled] from wrongful execution. Georgia will have abandoned its moral compass.”

 

According to CNN, federal law, originating from a 2002 Virginia case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, says executing intellectually disabled individuals violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling also allows states to define intellectual disability. In Georgia, that means attorneys for death row inmates have to prove mental impairment “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Unfortunately for Hill, he and his attorneys were not able to do this.

 

Kammer has represented Hill for 20 years, and said that in any other state, Hill would have served just a life sentence. It wasn’t until 1990 that Hill would be sentenced to death, for killing fellow prison inmate Joseph Handspike, beating him to death with a nail-studded board. Five years earlier, the then 25-year-old Hill had shot and killed his 18-year-old girlfriend, Myra Wright.

 

Shortly prior to the state of Georgia actually executing Warren Hill, Kammer tweeted, “A justice system that would allow the execution of Warren Hill is very nearly a criminal enterprise itself and an abomination.”

 

Kammer is not alone in saying that Warren Hill should not have been executed, even though he was a twice convicted killer. Thousands of people in Georgia, and millions all across the United States think that this execution had violated the Eighth Amendment.

 

When asked about this case, WMC junior Brandon Walker said, “When I found out about this story, I was kind of shocked at the fact that a man with a disability, I mean this easily could have have violated the constitution.”

 

“My only question is, did it actually violate the Constitution? However, I do believe that no matter the disability someone has, to a certain extent, they should be held accountable for their actions. But I don’t know, I think that there are many unanswered questions,” Walker shared.

 

Brandon was very obviously one of many that was skeptical at the decision made by the state of Georgia.

 

Georgia is the only state in the entire country that requires defendants to actually prove an intellectual disability beyond a reasonable doubt, which is also the strictest standard of proof.

 

“We acknowledge that Mr. Hill should be held accountable for his actions and behavior,” Torin Togut, president of the Arc of Georgia, said in a letter written on Hill’s behalf. “However, it is our contention that Mr. Hill, who has an intellectual disability, should not be subject to capital punishment.”

 

With all of the controversy that has surrounded this case for many long years, it has finally come to a close, though debates about the morality and the ethics of government officials in Georgia and their correctional facilities will forever be questioned.