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| Va. Inmate's IQ Test Sparks Hearing |
| By Roanoke Times |
| Published: 08/05/2003 |
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A psychiatrist who works with Virginia's death row inmates testified in federal court on July 28 that she was reassigned after she gave an inmate facing execution an intelligence test. Dr. Patricia General was taken off her death row assignment at Sussex I State Prison after her boss received a faxed letter from a warden at Greensville Correctional Center, where Virginia's death row inmates are executed. The head of the state's leading group against the death penalty said General was punished for doing her job because the state didn't like her findings. On May 11, 2003, General administered an intelligence test to Percy L. Walton, according to court documents and testimony. She was assigned to evaluate Walton in April, after his execution date for the 1996 slayings of three people in Danville had been scheduled for May 28. General was assigned to perform evaluations of Walton. Walton received a score of 66 on the test, which is considered 'well below average,' according to court documents. But the test is not considered the best indicator of intelligence and is not a reliable gauge of mental retardation, according to court documents. The testimony arose at a hearing in federal court over the question of whether Walton is competent to be executed. If Chief U.S. District Judge Samuel Wilson finds that Walton is not competent, he has said in a previous ruling that Walton should not be put to death, based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision that such an execution would be 'cruel and unusual punishment' under the Eighth Amendment. Wilson put an emergency stay on Walton's execution three days before he was scheduled to die. Wilson already has dismissed the argument that Walton is mentally retarded and thus should not be executed. He did not rule on the question of competency at the recent hearing. One of Walton's attorneys, Robert Lee, suggested during his questioning of General that the state's lawyer in the case, Assistant Attorney General Robert Harris, was behind General's reassignment. Lee mentioned testimony from a previous federal court hearing in which Harris said that he asked for another psychiatrist to be put on the case because, he said, General had told him she did not know what she was doing in the case. General looked taken aback by the question and testified that she had never told Harris she didn't know what she was doing. When Harris cross-examined General, he said that he was angry that the intelligence test had been ordered for Walton after his execution date was set. Harris brought up how he had previously scheduled an appointment to see General at the prison before he knew about the test. General testified that she was troubled that she and the psychiatrist who was subsequently assigned to Walton's case had a 'discrepancy in our opinions about a death row inmate who is about to be executed.' She was concerned that Walton could be schizophrenic. She testified that she told Harris as much during their meeting. 'I told you that if I had to do it again, I would do it the same way,' General said. Asked about the allegation that Harris, a longtime member of the Attorney General's Capital Litigation Unit, could have had something to do with General's reassignment, spokesman Carrie Cantrell said, 'The Attorney General's Office has no authority to hire or fire anyone in the Department of Corrections.' Such decisions are a function of the executive branch of the commonwealth, not Attorney General Jerry Kilgore's office, she said. When asked to be more specific about whether Harris actually played a role in General's reassignment, Cantrell would not comment, citing the pending litigation. |
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