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| Georgia Spares Life of Condemned Mentally Ill Man |
| By Reuters |
| Published: 02/27/2002 |
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Georgia's parole board Monday commuted the death sentence of a mentally ill man whose scheduled execution for killing a teen-age girl raised questions about executing youthful offenders and the insane. Alexander Williams, 33, had been set to die at midnight for the crime he committed when he was 17. But the board halted the execution just hours before it was set to take place after hearing from psychiatrists who assessed his mental condition. 'The board decided to commute Williams' death sentence to life without the possibility of parole,' said Stephanie McConnell, a spokeswoman for the State Board of Pardons and Paroles. Williams suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and has to be forcibly medicated by prison officers. His delusions include a belief that actress Sigourney Weaver is God and that he is under attack by demons. The board Monday heard a report from an independent team of psychiatrists who examined Williams to determine whether he had slipped so far into insanity that he would have to be forcibly medicated to make him sane enough to be executed. The psychiatrists' findings were not publicly disclosed. The U.S. Supreme Court has said the insane cannot be put to death, but has not ruled on whether it is legal to medicate them to make them sane enough to face execution. Williams' lawyers have argued that doing so would violate the U.S. constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Williams originally was scheduled to die by lethal injection last week, but the parole board issued a stay, saying it needed more time to assess his mental condition. Death penalty opponents had urged Georgia to spare Williams because of his age at the time of the killing and his mental illness. The case drew requests for clemency from the European Union and the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and pleas for mercy from Rosalynn Carter, wife of former President Jimmy Carter. Williams was convicted of abducting part-time model Aleta Bunch, 16, from a mall in Augusta, Georgia, then raping and shooting her in the head four times on March 4, 1986. 'We have the deepest sympathy for the family of Aleta Bunch,' said parole board Chairman Walter Ray. 'By making sure that Williams will remain in an 8-foot by 10-foot prison cell for the rest of his life with absolutely no hope for parole, we hope that the certainty of our decision will give Mrs. Bunch (the victim's mother) the closure she so deserves.' |
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