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| Mentally Ill Convicted Murderer Executed in Texas |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 03/28/2003 |
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A mentally ill man who was spared the death chamber last year by the Supreme Court was executed Wednesday for fatally stabbing a woman during an attempted rape. James Colburn, 43, never denied killing the woman at his home in 1994, but his attorneys had argued he should be spared because he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. ''None of this should have happened and now that I'm dying there is nothing left to worry about,'' Colburn said in a brief final statement. ''I know it was a mistake. I have no one to blame but myself.'' The Supreme Court last year halted executions of the mentally retarded, but has refused such protection for the mentally ill. Colburn's lawyers and death penalty opponents thought the high court would examine the issue when it stopped Colburn's scheduled execution Nov. 6, one minute before he could have been moved to the death chamber. But without comment in January, the justices refused to review his appeal and the execution was rescheduled. The Supreme Court denied further appeals Wednesday night. Colburn was convicted of choking and fatally stabbing a hitchhiker, Peggy Murphy, 55, at his apartment just north of Houston as she resisted a rape attempt. Colburn had been in mental institutions at least twice and in and out of prisons numerous times for robbery, burglary, assault and arson. The execution was the 12th this year in Texas, the nation's most active death penalty state. With three more set for next month, Texas remains on a pace to top the record 40 carried out in 2000. |
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