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Condemned inmates pursuing funds for clemency bids
Two Kentucky death row inmates are hoping brain scans and mental tests will bolster their cases for a rare grant of executive clemency that would spare their lives.
Ralph S. Baze Jr., condemned for killing a sheriff and deputy in eastern Kentucky in 1992, has asked a federal judge to grant him funding for a brain scan and testing as he prepares to ask Gov. Steve Beshear for clemency.
Baze's request, filed Wednesday in federal court in Lexington, comes just more than two weeks after U.S. District Judge Jennifer Coffman in Louisville granted $7,500 to 66-year-old Parramore Lee Sanborn to pursue a possible claim of brain damage or abnormalities as he seeks to stave off execution for the 1983 kidnapping, rape and murder of Barbara Heilman in Henry County.
"This information may lead to a more accurate diagnosis and would not duplicate information already available to the governor," Coffman wrote on Dec. 12.
The tests part of a bid to get Beshear to do something that's only happened twice in the 35 years since the reinstatement of the death penalty in Kentucky — a commutation of sentence for a condemned inmate.
Gov. Paul Patton in December 2003 commuted to life in prison the death sentence of Kevin Stanford, who was 17 at the time of 20-year-old Barbel Poore's slaying in 1981 in Louisville. Gov. Ernie Fletcher did the same for James Earl Slaughter in December 2007, finding his defense counsel so deficient that the attorney did not know his client's real name. Slaughter was convicted of killing Ester Stewart of Louisville in 1983.
Douglas Berman, an Ohio State University law professor who blogs about sentencing and clemency issues, said "lame duck" governors are more likely to commute a death sentence because they don't face the "standard political calculations" facing someone who has another term in office or an election looming.
"The political comfort is there," Berman said. "Those are the moments at which ... a governor recognizes they are going to have an opportunity to do something the new folks may not be able to do."
Patton, now University of Pikeville president, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Stanford's status as a juvenile played into the decision. A U.S. Supreme Court decision two years later barring the execution of juveniles validated his decision to allow Stanford to live, Patton said.
"I believe that there is probably an element of immaturity in a juvenile which makes the death penalty unjustified even though the crime was heinous," Patton said.
P.S. Ruckman Jr., a political science professor at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Ill., who blogs about clemency, said governors in many states, including Kentucky, have wide latitude when weighing whether to grant clemency.
"The governor can consider things that can't by law be allowed as evidence," Ruckman said. "People should have access to serious consideration for clemency. There is a strong sense in many states that you just don't have that."
Neither inmate is facing an imminent execution. Kentucky is currently barred by a judge from carrying out a lethal injection because of issues with the state's protocol. Kentucky also lacks a supply of sodium thiopental, one of three drugs used in a lethal injection.
Kentucky Assistant Attorney General William Robert Long, though, argued against funding the tests, telling Coffman in briefs that Sanborn's funding request amounted to a "fishing expedition" and testing wasn't "reasonably necessary" since there was no question of guilt or the appropriateness of the death sentence.
David Barron, the attorney for both Sanborn and Baze, made similar arguments in both cases — that tests have never been done and a life-long history of head injuries warrants examination.
"With a clemency application on the horizon, it is now absolutely critical for a full neuropsychological evaluation to be conducted so the Governor of Kentucky can have a full picture before him in deciding whether to grant clemency," Barron wrote in a petition for the funds for Sanborn.
Dudley Sharp, Death Penalty Resources Director of Justice For All, a pro-capital punishment group in Houston, said granting funds for brain tests is needed in some cases.
"All citizens can hope for is that the judge has properly evaluated the claims ... and ordered the tests," Sharp said. "We can just hope that its justified."
http://www.kypost.com/dpp/news/state...#ixzz1iRHrn3YL
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