John W. Whitehead, founder and pres­i­dent of the Rutherford Institute, called for clemen­cy for Percy Lavar Walton, a Virginia inmate sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on June 8. Walton is a psy­chot­ic schiz­o­phrenic who has suf­fered with severe men­tal ill­ness since ado­les­cence. He is on death row for three mur­ders he com­mit­ted when he was 18 years old. Whitehead writes:

Dubbed ​“Crazy Horse” by prison offi­cials, Walton … is scarce­ly con­scious of the fate that awaits him. While oth­ers on death row bide their time in count­ing down to their final hours, Walton spends his time amass­ing a large pile of salt, pep­per and sug­ar pack­ets in his prison cell.

And while state offi­cials may view Walton’s pend­ing exe­cu­tion as the final form of pun­ish­ment, Walton does not see exe­cu­tion as the end of his life. Instead, he believes that his exe­cu­tion will restore life, bring­ing him, his grand­fa­ther and his vic­tims back to life. During his sen­tenc­ing hear­ing, he report­ed­ly laughed, waved to fam­i­ly mem­bers in the court­room and wrote inco­her­ent notes to his attor­ney.

Clearly, this is not a sane man. Nor does he seem to have suf­fi­cient men­tal acu­ity to view his pend­ing state-enforced death as the ulti­mate pun­ish­ment. Most med­ical experts con­cur.… Two inde­pen­dent doc­tors have offi­cial­ly diag­nosed him as schiz­o­phrenic. One doc­tor not­ed that Walton has con­tin­u­al­ly suf­fered from severe depres­sion, an inabil­i­ty to focus and mod­er­ate to severe lev­els of insan­i­ty. Another doc­tor point­ed out that he presents symp­toms of hal­lu­ci­na­tions, delu­sions, bizarre behav­ior and pos­i­tive for­mal thought dis­or­der. State psy­chi­a­trist Dr. Patricia General described Walton as ​“florid­ly psy­chot­ic”.…

Walton’s delu­sions are so far-fetched that he has claimed to be every­one from his own father to the King of Hearts, Superman, Queen Bee and Jesus Christ. He insists that the Bible was writ­ten about him and that he hears voic­es and sees a dis­turb­ing image of a face with a fish­hook in its eye. Walton also believes that if he clos­es his eyes, he can become invis­i­ble.
…

No tru­ly civ­i­lized and humane soci­ety exe­cutes the help­less. To do so is to resort to bar­barism. There must be lines beyond which we will not cross, even in the name of seek­ing jus­tice or a greater good.

(Rutherford Institute, Commentary, May 24, 2006). See Mental Illness and New Voices.

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