UPDATE: Warren Hill was grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion by a Georgia court just hours before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion on July 15. A hear­ing is sched­uled for July 18 to con­sid­er chal­lenges to a new state law that shields the iden­ti­ty of the lethal injec­tion drug’s man­u­fac­tur­er and the pre­scrib­ing physi­cian from the pub­lic. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 15, 2013).

As a peti­tion on behalf of Georgia death row inmate Warren Hill awaits con­sid­er­a­tion by the U.S. Supreme Court, the role of habeas cor­pus in pro­tect­ing defen­dants’ fun­da­men­tal rights has assumed greater impor­tance. A recent arti­cle by Lincoln Caplan in the American Prospect explores the sig­nif­i­cance of the ​“Great Writ.” This guar­an­tee of con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions allows fed­er­al courts to deter­mine whether an inmate is being held in vio­la­tion of the Constitution or oth­er laws, and has been used to chal­lenge death sen­tences that may have been unlaw­ful. In 1996, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) was passed by the U.S. Congress, impos­ing a time lim­it on fil­ing such peti­tions and gen­er­al­ly allow­ing only one such peti­tion. Hill’s recent appeal con­tain­ing clear proof of his men­tal retar­da­tion to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit was denied because the court said it was a sec­ond peti­tion and could only be con­sid­ered if it relat­ed to his inno­cence, rather than his death sen­tence. In a dis­sent­ing opin­ion, Judge Rosemary Barkett wrote, ​“The per­verse con­se­quence of such an appli­ca­tion of AEDPA is that a fed­er­al court must acqui­esce to, even con­done, a state’s insis­tence on car­ry­ing out the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al exe­cu­tion of a men­tal­ly retard­ed per­son.” Hill is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on July 15 unless the Supreme Court intervenes.

(L. Caplan, ​“The Withered Writ,” The American Prospect, July 15, 2013.) See Intellectual Disabilities and Articles.

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