High court rejects quick action on appeal; execution on hold
Posted on Friday, September 5, 2008
Convicted murderer Frank Williams Jr. won’t be executed next week after the Arkansas Supreme Court denied a request Thursday to quickly resolve an appeal affecting his execution.
The ruling prompted Gov. Mike Beebe to delay Williams ’ execution until further “rulings and / or orders from the courts,” according to a statement released by his office.
Beebe has ordered the Department of Correction to halt its execution preparations.
The court’s decision, according to the chief deputy for Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, could mean other death-row inmates could have their executions scheduled before Williams is put to death.
Williams, 42, was convicted of murdering Lafayette County farmer Clyde Spence in 1992, shooting him in the face. He worked for Spence and has said they had a dispute over unpaid wages and a broken tractor.
Beebe is considering clemency in the case.
Last week, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Timothy Fox ruled that the Department of Correction couldn’t use its new execution protocol to put Williams to death because it adopted the protocol without first following the Arkansas Administrative Procedure Act.
That state law sets procedures state agencies must follow when they make rules. It requires public notices and reviews.
McDaniel’s office appealed Fox’s ruling Tuesday, asking the state Supreme Court to expedite its decision to keep Williams’ execution on schedule.
Also Thursday, the court denied a motion by federal public defender Julie Brain to transfer Williams’ appeal to the Arkansas Court of Appeals.
Both orders were one-sentence rulings. Justice Tom Glaze, who is retiring, didn’t participate in either decision.
Williams’ federal public defenders have argued before the Arkansas Board of Parole that their client is mentally retarded. His IQ has been tested at 75. The state law banning the execution of people who were mentally retarded at the time of their crimes was passed in 1993, shortly after Williams’ conviction.
Under state law, there is a rebuttable presumption that a person is mentally retarded if he has an IQ of 65 or below. The definition also includes someone with “significantly subaverage intellectual functioning or impairment in adaptive functioning manifest in the developmental period,” accompanied by a “deficit in adaptive behavior.” Brain also contends that Williams, who is black, is the victim of racial bias. Her petition for clemency notes that the four people who have been sentenced to death since 1990 in the judicial district that includes Lafayette County have all been black and had white victims.
Brent Haltom, the prosecutor whose judicial district includes Lafayette County, has denied any discrimination and says blacks are well-represented on juries in the county.
Five blacks and seven whites were on Williams’ jury.
Beebe has said that it’s up to the courts to decide whether Williams is mentally retarded. The U. S. Supreme Court routinely reviews a condemned inmate’s case just before his scheduled execution.
Last month, Williams’ federal lawsuit challenging the legality of lethal injection — filed along with three other death-row inmates — was dismissed by an Arkansas federal judge.
All of those other inmates, Don Davis, Terrick Nooner and Jack Harold Jones, have had execution dates scheduled over the past two years.
Beebe spokesman Matt De-Cample said that if Williams’ appeals drag on, then another inmate could be scheduled for execution before him. DeCample said Davis has no more appeals pending. He said McDaniel’s office has told Beebe that the attorney general will send a letter authorizing the governor to set a date for Davis. Jones is also free of pending court actions, making him potentially eligible for execution. Nooner still has a lawsuit making its way through federal court.
Justin Allen, McDaniel’s chief deputy, said Beebe, McDaniel and the Correction Department will discuss whether to set execution dates for Davis and Jones or wait for Williams’ suit to be resolved.
That discussion should take place “sometime next week,” Allen said.
Neither Davis nor Jones are parties to Williams’ lawsuit, but if execution dates are set for them, “I can’t imagine that their attorneys won’t automatically file the same lawsuit,” Allen said.
The last Arkansas inmate put to death was Eric Nance in November 2005 for the murder of an 18-year-old Malvern woman.
Arkansas’ death row has 39 inmates. All of them are men, 25 blacks and 14 whites.
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