New Mexico abol­ished the death penal­ty for future offens­es in 2009. However, two peo­ple still face exe­cu­tion, includ­ing Timothy Allen (pic­tured), who has been on death row for near­ly 17 years. His super­fi­cial tri­al and woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion reveal sys­temic flaws in the state’s appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The lead attor­ney in Allen’s tri­al had nev­er tried a death penal­ty case before, and failed to research Allen’s psy­chi­atric his­to­ry. Later inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that Allen had been diag­nosed with and treat­ed for schiz­o­phre­nia and expe­ri­enced audi­to­ry hal­lu­ci­na­tions. According to one psy­chi­atric report, Allen was psy­chot­ic at the time of the mur­der for which he was sen­tenced to death, and com­mit­ted the crime ​“while under the influ­ence of com­mand hal­lu­ci­na­tions, not will­ful­ly.” No wit­ness­es were called to tes­ti­fy on Allen’s behalf dur­ing the sen­tenc­ing phase of his tri­al. The super­vis­ing attor­ney who assigned the inex­pe­ri­enced attor­ney to the case was him­self sub­ject to drug test­ing by a state dis­ci­pli­nary board and was of lit­tle help in the case. Allen’s cur­rent attor­neys argue that the case would be tried very dif­fer­ent­ly today and that he was deprived of his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a fair trial.

Allen was found guilty of a 1995 attempt­ed rape and mur­der of a young woman. 

(L. Linthicum, ​“We Cannot Be Sloppy With Death Sentences,” Albuquerque Journal, August 30, 2012). See Mental Illness and Representation. Listen to DPIC’s pod­cast on Representation.

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