Post by sclcookie on Jun 6, 2006 11:48:37 GMT -5
“Mentally ill inmate Walton should not be executed”
By Jack Payden-Travers, Director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
The Virginian-Pilot 06June06
(As The Virginian-Pilot does not post published non-staff written columns on their website, it is being made available at http://www.VADP.org.)
No one wants to go into his cell because he smears his feces over items. He bathes only when forced to by the guards. He howls and bangs on the walls. He parrots what you say to him. He thinks he is going to come back after June 8th to work at a Burger King.
His name is Percy Levar Walton, and this man is not in a mental hospital. He is in a cell on death row at Sussex I State Prison and soon will be moved to Virginia’s death house at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. There he will be executed on June 8th.
Is the year 2006 or 1706? Is this the modern-day Commonwealth of Virginia or a newly founded colony fighting for survival? Is the cell constructed of cinderblock and stainless steel or wooden walls and rusty wrought-iron bars? Are we really preparing to kill a mentally ravaged individual as if we were all stuck in a Victor Hugo novel?
Gov. Kaine once again faces the specter of death in the execution of Percy Walton. Will he show mercy as Gov. Gilmore did to Calvin Swann, another death row inmate who also suffered from schizophrenia and who also was sentenced to death by the same Danville judge? Or will Percy become Virginia’s 96th sacrifice in recent years to the death penalty gods?
There are alternatives to the death penalty, and Gov. Kaine has the option of commuting this man’s sentence to life in prison without parole. In that case Percy Walton will die in prison as did Calvin Swann.
It is ironic that this event is going forward at all. Last October no less a figure than Sen. Kenneth Stolle, a death penalty supporter and the chair of the Courts of Justice Committee of the Virginia Senate, stated: "It is only a matter of time before Virginia and other states ban the death penalty…It will come when an innocent man is executed. Inevitably, somebody who is innocent will be executed." How many more people will we put to death before we end the practice of capital punishment? Indeed according to the latest Gallup poll (May 2006), 63% of Americans believe that an innocent person has already been executed within the last five years.
But Percy Walton’s execution is not a matter of guilt or innocence. Percy pleaded guilty to the three murders he was charged with. He is guilty of murder. The question is what constitutes an appropriate punishment in such an unusual case.
Under Justice Lewis Powell the U.S. Supreme Court ruled back in 1986 that an individual had to be “mentally competent” to be executed. Can a severe schizophrenic be deemed mentally competent when his two most recent IQ scores came in under 70 – in the range of a person mentally retarded to the level of an 8-year-old – and when he states that after execution he will come back to ride a motorcycle? Does he really understand what death means if he thinks his execution will result in his getting a job at a fast food restaurant?
There is no question but that for the good of society Percy Walton needs to be maintained in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. The real question is this: Does society need to, indeed have the right to, strap him to a gurney on the night of June 8th and lethally inject him with chemicals, employing a method of euthanasia that even Virginia bans from use on cats and dogs as cruel and inhumane? When as a society will we treat people with mental illness instead of punishing them for suffering from it?
Jack Payden-Travers, Director
Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
P.O. Box 4804
Charlottesville, VA 22905
888-567-VADP (office)
434-960-4673 (Jack)
www.vadp.org
jack@vadp.org
By Jack Payden-Travers, Director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
The Virginian-Pilot 06June06
(As The Virginian-Pilot does not post published non-staff written columns on their website, it is being made available at http://www.VADP.org.)
No one wants to go into his cell because he smears his feces over items. He bathes only when forced to by the guards. He howls and bangs on the walls. He parrots what you say to him. He thinks he is going to come back after June 8th to work at a Burger King.
His name is Percy Levar Walton, and this man is not in a mental hospital. He is in a cell on death row at Sussex I State Prison and soon will be moved to Virginia’s death house at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. There he will be executed on June 8th.
Is the year 2006 or 1706? Is this the modern-day Commonwealth of Virginia or a newly founded colony fighting for survival? Is the cell constructed of cinderblock and stainless steel or wooden walls and rusty wrought-iron bars? Are we really preparing to kill a mentally ravaged individual as if we were all stuck in a Victor Hugo novel?
Gov. Kaine once again faces the specter of death in the execution of Percy Walton. Will he show mercy as Gov. Gilmore did to Calvin Swann, another death row inmate who also suffered from schizophrenia and who also was sentenced to death by the same Danville judge? Or will Percy become Virginia’s 96th sacrifice in recent years to the death penalty gods?
There are alternatives to the death penalty, and Gov. Kaine has the option of commuting this man’s sentence to life in prison without parole. In that case Percy Walton will die in prison as did Calvin Swann.
It is ironic that this event is going forward at all. Last October no less a figure than Sen. Kenneth Stolle, a death penalty supporter and the chair of the Courts of Justice Committee of the Virginia Senate, stated: "It is only a matter of time before Virginia and other states ban the death penalty…It will come when an innocent man is executed. Inevitably, somebody who is innocent will be executed." How many more people will we put to death before we end the practice of capital punishment? Indeed according to the latest Gallup poll (May 2006), 63% of Americans believe that an innocent person has already been executed within the last five years.
But Percy Walton’s execution is not a matter of guilt or innocence. Percy pleaded guilty to the three murders he was charged with. He is guilty of murder. The question is what constitutes an appropriate punishment in such an unusual case.
Under Justice Lewis Powell the U.S. Supreme Court ruled back in 1986 that an individual had to be “mentally competent” to be executed. Can a severe schizophrenic be deemed mentally competent when his two most recent IQ scores came in under 70 – in the range of a person mentally retarded to the level of an 8-year-old – and when he states that after execution he will come back to ride a motorcycle? Does he really understand what death means if he thinks his execution will result in his getting a job at a fast food restaurant?
There is no question but that for the good of society Percy Walton needs to be maintained in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. The real question is this: Does society need to, indeed have the right to, strap him to a gurney on the night of June 8th and lethally inject him with chemicals, employing a method of euthanasia that even Virginia bans from use on cats and dogs as cruel and inhumane? When as a society will we treat people with mental illness instead of punishing them for suffering from it?
Jack Payden-Travers, Director
Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
P.O. Box 4804
Charlottesville, VA 22905
888-567-VADP (office)
434-960-4673 (Jack)
www.vadp.org
jack@vadp.org