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| Condemned federal inmate changes mind, decides to fight execution |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 05/24/2004 |
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A federal death row inmate who waived his right to appeal his death sentence now wants to fight his scheduled execution next month, his attorneys said. David Paul Hammer's decision just four months after waiving his right to appeal is at least his eighth flip-flop on the appeals issue since he was sentenced in 1998, said Ronald Travis, one of his attorneys. Travis said Hammer's change of heart buoys arguments that he is mentally ill and should not be executed. "There is something going on in his head that I cannot account for," Travis said. "He has got issues." Hammer's attorneys planned to file motions last Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to have his appeals reinstated. They contend his lawyers were not present at a January hearing when a federal judge allowed him to waive his pending appeals. The appeals court could delay Hammer's execution while it considers the issue. Hammer, 45, is scheduled to die June 8 by lethal injection at a federal prison near Terre Haute, Ind. The date was set after he waived pending appeals for his conviction in the 1996 murder of his cellmate, Andrew Marti, at the Allenwood Federal Penitentiary outside Williamsport, Pa. Hammer was in Allenwood serving a sentence for escaping from an Oklahoma state prison in the early 1980s. He still had 1,223 years remaining on a sentence in Oklahoma for crimes including kidnapping and attempted murder. Federal prosecutors "do not believe for a minute" that Hammer is insane, said Frederick Martin, an assistant U.S. attorney in Williamsport, Pa. Martin said Hammer deserved to die because he wrote a note threatening that he "would kill again." If Hammer's execution proceeds, he would become the fourth person executed at the Terre Haute prison since 2001. Three men - including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh - have been put to death there since 2001, when the government ended a 38-year hiatus on federal executions. |
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