Warren Hill execution draws nearer as supreme court urged to step in

Intellectually disabled prisoner to put to death in Georgia despite court ruling in 2002 that such executions were unconstitutional

Warren Hill, 52, was sentenced to death for killing a fellow prisoner, Joseph Handspike, in 1990.

Time is running out for Warren Hill, an intellectually disabled death row prisoner in Georgia who will be injected with a single lethal dose of sedative at 7pm tonight unless there is a last-minute stay of execution.
All eyes are now on the US supreme court, which must decide before 7pm whether it is willing to allow the execution to go ahead, despite the fact that the same court banned death sentences for prisoners with learning difficulties a decade ago.
In 2002, in the case of Atkins v. Virginia, the highest judicial panel in the nation ruled that putting to death a person who was "mentally retarded" was a violation of the eighth amendment of the US constitution that bans cruel and unusual punishment.
That clear prohibition notwithstanding, and despite the fact that Hill, 52, has been found by Georgia's own courts to be in all likelihood "mentally retarded".
In the final hours leading up to the execution, the nine justices of the supreme court will be deliberating on what to do – a process that is complicated by the fact that the court is not in session and the judges are all dispersed around the world on speaking and teaching tours.
Four justices would have to be in agreement for them to decide to hear Hill's case, but a majority of five would be needed in order to impose a stay of execution.
That means that it is technically possible for the court to announce this afternoon that it will reconsider the case of Warren Hill only for him to be executed anyway.
A more likely outcome is that they decide that they want more time to think about this, and postpone a decision on whether or not to hear the case until September.
These legal niceties are important for the simple reason that Hill's life now depends on the outcome of them. But beyond the finer details of supreme court lore lies a more fundamental truth: that the will of the highest court in America is about to be defied when Georgia executes an intellectually disabled man.
"The supreme court issued a clear mandate that 'mentally retarded' prisoners should not be executed, yet Georgia has developed a loophole," said Richard Dieter who heads the Death Penalty Information Center.
Jim Ellis, a lawyer who argued the Atkins v. Virginia case in front of the supreme court and also represented Hill in a plea to the supreme court in his case earlier this year, decried Georgia's decision to carry out the decision. The state is the only one in the union that requires death row prisoners to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that they are intellectually disabled.
"That's a burden of proof that was designed for states and prosecutors to adhere to – it was not intended for individuals," Ellis said. "So it's no surprise that the standard cannot be met."
Ellis added that it was "beyond frustrating" to have won the Atkins v. Virginia case banning executions of prisoners with learning difficulties, only to see Georgia go ahead in any case. "It's outrageous that an individual who clearly is 'mentally retarded' is facing execution in a matter of hours."
Lesa Hope of the Georgia group All About Developmental Disabilities said that "everybody has agreed that Warren Hill is intellectually disabled, but it's very likely that they are going to execute him." She pointed out that Georgia was the first state in America to pass a law prohibiting the execution of people with learning difficulties, yet here it was 25 years later about to do just that.
"Twenty-five years ago we were the leading state in the country. Now we are the worst," she said.