Mark Urban, chair­man of the Governor’s Advocacy Council for Persons with Disabilities, has request­ed that North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley ful­ly con­sid­er death row inmate Guy LeGrande’s request for clemen­cy. LeGrande (pic­tured), who is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on December 1, has been diag­nosed as psy­chot­ic and delusional. 

“Mr. LeGrande was allowed to rep­re­sent him­self even though he believed near the time of his tri­al that Oprah Winfrey and Dan Rather were speak­ing to him per­son­al­ly through tele­vi­sion sets,” Urban wrote. ​“It appears his men­tal ill­ness made it impos­si­ble for him to get a fair tri­al.” LeGrande asked the jury at his tri­al to sen­tence him to death.

Several Eastern North Carolina pas­tors and bish­ops have also asked Easley to grant clemen­cy, along with Carnell Robinson, chair­man of N.C Black Leadership Caucus, and Julian Bond, chair­man of the NAACP’s nation­al board of direc­tors.
(News & Observer, Nov. 16, 2006). See Mental Illness. The American Bar Association and the American Psychiatric Association have called for an exemp­tion from the death penal­ty for those who were severe­ly men­tal­ly ill at the time of their crime.

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