Tennessee Denies Clemency to Blind Prisoner, Permits His Execution Without Reviewing Juror’s Admission That She Was Biased Against Him

The state of Tennessee exe­cut­ed Lee Hall (pic­tured) on December 5, 2019, with­out pro­vid­ing him judi­cial review of a legal claim that led the state’s courts to over­turn the con­vic­tion of a for­mer death-row pris­on­er just weeks before.

Citing what he char­ac­ter­ized as ​“exten­sive” judi­cial review span­ning ​“the course of almost 30 years,” Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced on December 4 that he had denied clemen­cy to Hall, who became blind dur­ing his time on death row. That review, Governor Lee said, includ­ed ​“addi­tion­al review and rul­ings by the Tennessee Supreme Court” in the past week. In those rul­ings, the Tennessee court refused to con­sid­er evi­dence that a juror in Hall’s case had failed to dis­close that she had been raped and phys­i­cal­ly abused by her ex-hus­band and ​“hat­ed” Hall, whose case involved domes­tic vio­lence, as a result. Less than two weeks ear­li­er, the Tennessee courts had grant­ed a new tri­al to Hubert Glenn Sexton because a juror in his 2001 death-penal­ty tri­al had sim­i­lar­ly failed to dis­close her his­to­ry of domestic abuse.

“The judg­ment and sen­tence stand based on [the court] rul­ings,” Governor Lee said, ​“and I will not inter­vene in this case.”

Hall’s case also attract­ed atten­tion because of his phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty and frailty. Hall ​“is blind and vul­ner­a­ble,” his lawyers wrote in an unsuc­cess­ful motion to stay his exe­cu­tion, and “[t]he spec­ta­cle of his exe­cu­tion — guid­ing him to the gur­ney — would ​‘offend human­i­ty.’” Hall, they said, ​“bears no prac­ti­cal risk of harm to any­one” if impris­oned ​“for the remain­der of his natural life.” 

Hall was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1992 for the mur­der of his estranged girl­friend. He lost his sight as a result of glau­co­ma, which his lawyers say was not prop­er­ly treat­ed while he was on death row. Hall would be the sec­ond blind per­son exe­cut­ed in the United States since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment resumed in the United States in the 1970s. California exe­cut­ed Clarence Ray Allen, a 76-year-old blind man, in 2006. In 1988, Montana Governor Ted Schwinden com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of David Cameron Keith, in part because of his par­tial paral­y­sis and blindness.

Hall has been seek­ing a stay of exe­cu­tion so that the courts could review new evi­dence that his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to be tried by an impar­tial jury had been vio­lat­ed when a juror who served on his case failed to dis­close her bias against him. In a sworn affi­davit Hall filed with the Hamilton County Criminal Court in October, the juror — iden­ti­fied in court papers as ​“Juror A” to pro­tect her pri­va­cy — said she had been sub­ject­ed to recur­ring domes­tic vio­lence and rape over a six-year peri­od dur­ing an abu­sive first mar­riage. Earlier this year, after she had become aware that Hall was fac­ing exe­cu­tion, Juror A con­tact­ed his attor­neys and, for the first time, revealed her his­to­ry of domes­tic abuse. Hall’s court plead­ings alleged that ​“Juror A con­cedes that she was actu­al­ly biased against Mr. Hall at the time of the tri­al and in fact hat­ed him because he remind­ed her of her abu­sive hus­band.” The juror’s ​“affir­ma­tive mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions” dur­ing jury selec­tion, Hall’s lawyers argue, ​“ren­dered Mr. Hall’s cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al fundamentally unfair.”

A month lat­er, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals grant­ed a new tri­al to for­mer death-row pris­on­er Hubert Glenn Sexton, find­ing that a juror in his domes­tic-vio­lence relat­ed tri­al had not dis­closed that she was a sur­vivor of domes­tic abuse. The inter­me­di­ate appeals court cit­ed Tennessee Supreme Court case law that ​“the fail­ure of a prospec­tive juror to dis­close she was a vic­tim of domes­tic vio­lence in a cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al involv­ing domes­tic vio­lence ​‘is not insignif­i­cant.’” In deny­ing Hall a stay of exe­cu­tion, the Tennessee Supreme Court said Hall’s claim was ​“pro­ce­du­ral­ly dis­tin­guish­able” from Sexton’s.

Justice Sharon Lee dis­sent­ed, writ­ing: ​“Finality is well and good, but should not trump fair­ness and jus­tice. The state should not elec­tro­cute Mr. Hall before giv­ing him the oppor­tu­ni­ty for mean­ing­ful appel­late review of the impor­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al issues assert­ed in his fil­ings.” Hall’s lawyers echoed a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment in a state­ment, writ­ing that “[t]his rul­ing is a rush to the elec­tric chair. As a result of the Court’s haste, Tennessee may soon become the sec­ond state in mod­ern his­to­ry to exe­cute a blind man.” 

Hall is the fourth Tennessee death-row pris­on­er in the last two years to select elec­tro­cu­tion as his method of exe­cu­tion. Edmund Zagorski, David Earl Miller, and Stephen Michael West were all exe­cut­ed in the elec­tric chair after med­ical experts said that Billy Ray Irick was not prop­er­ly anes­thetized dur­ing his 2018 lethal injection execution. 

On December 4, Hall filed a peti­tion ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a stay of exe­cu­tion and to review his juror-bias claim and Tennessee filed its response in oppo­si­tion. The Court denied his petition.