Post by sclcookie on Jun 6, 2006 1:22:15 GMT -5
Is this how we treat the mentally ill in Virginia? Execute them?
June 8 is fast approaching. It will mark my 10th trip to the Greensville
Correctional Center, but I don't go to see friends and help them deal with
the trials and tribulations of incarceration. No, I will go there once
again to stand outside the prison gates in protest against the state
killing that has taken place in Jarratt since the death house was moved
there from the old penitentiary on Spring Street in Richmond in 1990.
Since 1982 the Commonwealth of Virginia has put 95 men to death.
This time, Virginia is preparing to execute a man whom even state
officials declare severely mentally ill and who one state psychiatrist
noted appears to be "severely mentally retarded." Percy Levar Walton is
one of the few men on death row whom I have met. We spent some time
together before his last scheduled execution in 2003. Percy has difficulty
communicating, and for most of our half-hour together he repeated single
words again and again. I asked, "Why did you choose electrocution as your
method of execution?" Percy responded: "Electrocution? Electrocution?
Electrocution?" Having worked during college as a psychiatric attendant, I
am familiar with this parroting pattern as a sign of schizophrenia.
It is hard to comprehend how any court, much less 7 of the 13 judges
sitting on the 4th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, could
have pronounced Mr. Walton "mentally competent" for execution. But then
again all they saw were pieces of paper, not the genuine item, a
27-year-old man who can't really communicate, who doesn't have the ability
to acknowledge the cards and letters we send him each year, who paces in
his cell and bangs on the walls so that other prisoners on the row don't
want to be housed next to him. He reportedly smears feces within his cell.
Percy is the man the guards refer to as "horse" for Crazy Horse. His is
the only cell with no TV or radio. Percy talks only with the imaginary man
who inhabits the cell with him. His only possessions are the salt, pepper
and sugar packets he collects off his food tray each day, which a guard
delivers through the slot in his 2-inch-thick steel door. He doesn't leave
his cell until the guards force him to take a shower when the stench bec
omes too much for them to take.
In other words, for the 9 years Percy Levar Walton has now been on the row
he has exhibited classic symptoms of schizophrenia. And that is why none
of us will ever see him alive again. He is the 21st-century version of the
"child in the attic" of previous eras, the mentally ill relative never
seen outside the home or institution and then referred to only in
whispers. The insane asylum has been replaced for many of our mentally ill
in the "modern era" by the "correctional facility" where treatment is
limited by inadequate budgets and prison guards not trained to care for
those suffering from psychiatric disorders.
But this was not meant to be a treatise about prisons. It's about a man I
have met who I know is to be exterminated on June 8th. A man who
understands neither electrocution nor lethal injection, who recently
failed to check a box on the Department of Corrections' Choice of
Execution form and thus by default will be exterminated by lethal
injection. At age 16 he began exhibiting the signs of the mental illness
that eventually led him to a self-medicating addiction to cocaine and the
murder of 3 innocent people in his hometown of Danville.
I am opposed to all executions, not just of those who are so mentally ill
that they don't understand what is happening to them. But it seems macabre
to me that a court could rule that a man who believes he will get a job in
Burger King after his execution could be ruled "mentally competent" for
execution.
This is not a matter of guilt or innocence. It is a matter of decency and
fairness. Granted Percy Walton was chronologically aged 18 years and 1
month old when he committed these crimes. But what age was he mentally? We
know that one of the medical experts who examined him reports that he
operates at the level of a 7- or 8-year-old. What is his mental capacity
now? We know that the state psychiatrist who administered an IQ test in
2003 gave him a score of 66. The cutoff by VA statute for mental
retardation is 70 and below. We know he functions on the level of a person
with mental retardation.
How, then, has the Fourth Circuit by a vote of 7-6 ruled him eligible for
execution when the U.S. Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia (2002) has
protected the mentally retarded and declared them to be in a special class
of the population for whom execution would violate the Eighth Amendment to
the Constitution prohibiting "cruel and unusual" punishment? What about
the Supreme Court ruling in Ford v. Wainwright (1986) authored by Justice
Lewis Powell that said one had to understand what execution means to be
eligible for the punishment? But then for me Percy Walton is more than a
legal brief or a statutory definition, he is a severely mentally ill man
who suffers from schizophrenia and appears to be mentally retarded.
May God have mercy on his soul and may God have mercy on everyone from the
governor of Virginia to the warden to the guard who pulls the switch or
inserts the needle on June 8. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord God of
Hosts.
If you also have questions as to how any civilized society could kill this
mentally ill man, I invite you to join me in petitioning Gov. Tim Kaine
and asking him to commute Percy's sentence.
(source: JACK PAYDEN-TRAVERS is director of Virginians for Alternatives to
the Death Penalty----The Free Lance-Star)
June 8 is fast approaching. It will mark my 10th trip to the Greensville
Correctional Center, but I don't go to see friends and help them deal with
the trials and tribulations of incarceration. No, I will go there once
again to stand outside the prison gates in protest against the state
killing that has taken place in Jarratt since the death house was moved
there from the old penitentiary on Spring Street in Richmond in 1990.
Since 1982 the Commonwealth of Virginia has put 95 men to death.
This time, Virginia is preparing to execute a man whom even state
officials declare severely mentally ill and who one state psychiatrist
noted appears to be "severely mentally retarded." Percy Levar Walton is
one of the few men on death row whom I have met. We spent some time
together before his last scheduled execution in 2003. Percy has difficulty
communicating, and for most of our half-hour together he repeated single
words again and again. I asked, "Why did you choose electrocution as your
method of execution?" Percy responded: "Electrocution? Electrocution?
Electrocution?" Having worked during college as a psychiatric attendant, I
am familiar with this parroting pattern as a sign of schizophrenia.
It is hard to comprehend how any court, much less 7 of the 13 judges
sitting on the 4th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, could
have pronounced Mr. Walton "mentally competent" for execution. But then
again all they saw were pieces of paper, not the genuine item, a
27-year-old man who can't really communicate, who doesn't have the ability
to acknowledge the cards and letters we send him each year, who paces in
his cell and bangs on the walls so that other prisoners on the row don't
want to be housed next to him. He reportedly smears feces within his cell.
Percy is the man the guards refer to as "horse" for Crazy Horse. His is
the only cell with no TV or radio. Percy talks only with the imaginary man
who inhabits the cell with him. His only possessions are the salt, pepper
and sugar packets he collects off his food tray each day, which a guard
delivers through the slot in his 2-inch-thick steel door. He doesn't leave
his cell until the guards force him to take a shower when the stench bec
omes too much for them to take.
In other words, for the 9 years Percy Levar Walton has now been on the row
he has exhibited classic symptoms of schizophrenia. And that is why none
of us will ever see him alive again. He is the 21st-century version of the
"child in the attic" of previous eras, the mentally ill relative never
seen outside the home or institution and then referred to only in
whispers. The insane asylum has been replaced for many of our mentally ill
in the "modern era" by the "correctional facility" where treatment is
limited by inadequate budgets and prison guards not trained to care for
those suffering from psychiatric disorders.
But this was not meant to be a treatise about prisons. It's about a man I
have met who I know is to be exterminated on June 8th. A man who
understands neither electrocution nor lethal injection, who recently
failed to check a box on the Department of Corrections' Choice of
Execution form and thus by default will be exterminated by lethal
injection. At age 16 he began exhibiting the signs of the mental illness
that eventually led him to a self-medicating addiction to cocaine and the
murder of 3 innocent people in his hometown of Danville.
I am opposed to all executions, not just of those who are so mentally ill
that they don't understand what is happening to them. But it seems macabre
to me that a court could rule that a man who believes he will get a job in
Burger King after his execution could be ruled "mentally competent" for
execution.
This is not a matter of guilt or innocence. It is a matter of decency and
fairness. Granted Percy Walton was chronologically aged 18 years and 1
month old when he committed these crimes. But what age was he mentally? We
know that one of the medical experts who examined him reports that he
operates at the level of a 7- or 8-year-old. What is his mental capacity
now? We know that the state psychiatrist who administered an IQ test in
2003 gave him a score of 66. The cutoff by VA statute for mental
retardation is 70 and below. We know he functions on the level of a person
with mental retardation.
How, then, has the Fourth Circuit by a vote of 7-6 ruled him eligible for
execution when the U.S. Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia (2002) has
protected the mentally retarded and declared them to be in a special class
of the population for whom execution would violate the Eighth Amendment to
the Constitution prohibiting "cruel and unusual" punishment? What about
the Supreme Court ruling in Ford v. Wainwright (1986) authored by Justice
Lewis Powell that said one had to understand what execution means to be
eligible for the punishment? But then for me Percy Walton is more than a
legal brief or a statutory definition, he is a severely mentally ill man
who suffers from schizophrenia and appears to be mentally retarded.
May God have mercy on his soul and may God have mercy on everyone from the
governor of Virginia to the warden to the guard who pulls the switch or
inserts the needle on June 8. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord God of
Hosts.
If you also have questions as to how any civilized society could kill this
mentally ill man, I invite you to join me in petitioning Gov. Tim Kaine
and asking him to commute Percy's sentence.
(source: JACK PAYDEN-TRAVERS is director of Virginians for Alternatives to
the Death Penalty----The Free Lance-Star)