NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The execution of a blind man in Tennessee this week would mark only the second time in recent decades that a person without vision has been put to death in the U.S., the death row inmate’s lawyers say.
Lee Hall, 53, is scheduled to be electrocuted Thursday in a state that has accelerated the pace of its executions over the past year.
Hall had his sight when he entered death row nearly three decades ago, but attorneys for the condemned prisoner say he’s since become functionally blind due to improperly treated glaucoma.
Hall’s attorneys say only one other blind prisoner has been executed since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.
His case illustrates a trend in capital punishment: The longer inmates across the country wait to die, the more medical ailments they are likely to have by the time they enter the execution chamber.
“Death row is not — and is not intended to be — a nurturing environment, and it is unfortunately an environment that is extremely, physically and mentally debilitating,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. The stress of living under a death penalty “has both physical and psychological consequences,” he said.
Hall, formerly known as Leroy Hall Jr., has been on death row since he was convicted for the 1991 killing of his estranged girlfriend Traci Crozier. According to court documents, Hall threw a lit jug of gasoline into a car while Crozier was in the front seat trying to leave him. As a result, Crozier was burned on more than 90% of her body and died the next day.
In 2010, Hall was diagnosed with “chronic angle closure glaucoma.” Hall’s eyesight has continued to decline since then, his attorneys explained in court documents. They say the Department of Correction has failed to comply with medical recommendations to prevent further damage.
A spokeswoman for the department did not immediately return a request for comment.
“Lee Hall is blind and vulnerable. If confined to prison for the remainder of natural life, Mr. Hall bears no practical risk of harm to anyone,” Hall’s attorneys wrote in 2018. “The spectacle — guiding him to the gurney — would ‘offend humanity.’”
To date, the U.S. Supreme Court has neither set an upper age limit for executions nor created an exception for a physical infirmity.
The high court has, however, said the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment means that people who are insane, delusional or psychotic cannot be executed.
Yet that definition of “insane” is narrowly defined and as a result, most people with severe mental illness are often excluded.
“While blindness is a physical disability that may make an execution seem crueler and more inhumane, it doesn’t go to the question of competency of whether he may be executed,” Dunham said.
According to Hall’s attorneys, the last blind person executed was Clarence Ray Allen, who died via lethal injection in 2006 in California. Along with being unable to see, Allen was also a wheelchair-user and nearly deaf.
At the time, Allen, 76, was the oldest and most infirm inmate prisoner to be executed in the United States. And like Hall, Allen had been on death row for decades, where many of his infirmities developed while behind bars.
Last month, Hall announced he had decided to die by the electric chair rather than by lethal injection. Since Tennessee resumed executions in August 2018, three of the five prisoners put to death have chosen the electric chair.
In Tennessee, the state's primary execution method is lethal injection, but inmates who were convicted of crimes before January 1999 can choose electrocution.
With just days left before Thursday’s planned execution, Hall’s attorneys are asking Gov. Bill Lee for a reprieve to allow more time to consider questions about the possible bias of a juror who helped deliver the original death sentence.
Lee is reviewing the request. He has previously sidestepped questions about Tennessee executing a blind person, saying he did not know enough details about the case.
Source: nytimes.com,The Associated Press, December 2, 2019
Tennessee death row inmate Lee Hall moved to death watch
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — Tennessee death row inmate Lee Hall was moved to death watch Tuesday morning shortly after midnight.
Death watch is the three-day period before an execution where the inmate is placed in a cell adjacent to the execution chamber and is under 24-hour observation by a team of correctional officers.
Hall is slated to die by electrocution Thursday.
He was convicted in 1991 for the murder of Traci Crozier in Chattanooga.
Attorneys for the death row inmate told the Associated Press that Hall will be the second blind person to be executed in the country since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Source: fox17.com, C. Shelton, December 3, 2019
Tennessee Supreme Court denies stay of execution request for Death row inmate Lee Hall
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The Tennessee Supreme Court denied death row inmate Lee Hall's request for a stay of execution.
The request centered around possible bias of a juror who helped hand down the original death sentence decades ago.
The Court found that Hall wouldn't have likely succeeded in his claim of juror bias and failed to persuade the high court to create a "new, previously unrecognized procedure based on the facts of this case." Hall's execution is scheduled for Thursday.
However, Supreme Court Justice Sharon Lee dissented, saying she would have issued a stay of execution.
Hall's legal team released the a statement following the court's ruling:
Today the Tennessee Supreme Court held that the state can execute Lee Hall on Thursday, denying him the right to present evidence of unconstitutional jury bias to an appellate court that recently overturned a conviction on the same grounds.
This ruling is a rush to the electric chair. As a result of the Court’s haste, Tennessee may soon become the second state in history to execute a blind man.
In her dissent, Justice Lee found that the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals was likely to overturn Mr. Hall’s conviction based on the evidence of a serious constitutional violation in his trial. But the Supreme Court’s ruling today means that the Court of Appeals will never have the opportunity to consider this evidence.
Just eight days ago, Justice Lee noted, the Court of Appeals overturned a conviction in a strikingly similar case involving undisclosed jury bias—just as it did on at least two prior occasions.
“Finality is well and good, but should not trump fairness and justice,” Justice Lee wrote. “The State should not electrocute Mr. Hall before giving him the opportunity for meaningful appellate review of the important constitutional issues asserted in his filings.”
Hall was moved to death watch Tuesday and his execution is set for Thursday.
In Tennessee, inmates on death watch are placed in a cell next to the execution chamber for a three-day period in which they're under 24-hour surveillance.
Hall was convicted of killing Traci Crozier in 1991 in Chattanooga. He set her car on fire while she was still inside.
Source: newschannel5.com, R. Pewitt, December 4, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
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