Inmate sues to stop execution this month

Attorneys for a man scheduled to be executed later this month have asked a court in Jefferson County to stop his execution and declare him mentally incompetent.

ADVERTISEMENT

More headlines

Bruce Earl Ward, who has been on death row for 26 years, is set to die by lethal injection Oct. 21. He was convicted of strangling Little Rock convenience store clerk Rebecca Doss, 18, on Aug. 11, 1989.

A lawsuit filed Tuesday in Jefferson County Circuit Court against Wendy Kelley, director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, asks for a preliminary injunction halting Ward's execution on four separate claims.

The first claim says Ward is schizophrenic and does not understand his impending execution and that the execution would violate the Eighth and Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The court documents lists numerous occasions that lawyers say show Ward does not think the state will execute him.

A defense psychiatrist diagnosed Ward with paranoid schizophrenia, and court documents said the untreated illness has affected Ward's perception of his sentence. The court documents said Ward believes he is the target of a conspiracy among officials in Pennsylvania, Texas and Arkansas, and his death sentence is in part to cover up that conspiracy.

"He cited divine revelation, which caused him to believe he will never receive the death penalty but will walk out of prison to great riches and public acclaim, including the Hollywood movie about the information he reveals," the documents said.

"He does not believe God will allow the execution to occur," the psychiatrist is quoted in court documents as saying. "In his current untreated state, he has no rational understanding of his legal situation, or need for a defense. He is impervious to the advice of his attorneys."

The second point alleges Kelley found Ward competent for execution through fundamentally unfair procedures that include "her refusal to disclose the evidence she relied on and to allow Mr. Ward to rebut that evidence before the Director's final decision -- Mr. Ward has been denied due process of law."

The third point argues that Kelley is an administrative official and as such "she is institutionally and factually biased in favor of executing Mr. Ward, the scheduled execution would violate due process without a plenary judicial determination of Mr. Ward's competence."

And the final point claims that Kelley's power to determine Ward's competency violates the separation-of-powers requirement in Article IV of the Arkansas Constitution.

On Thursday, the state had not filed a response.

Ward's death sentence after his 1990 capital-murder conviction in Doss' death was overturned by the Arkansas Supreme Court. A second death sentence was imposed in 1993 but was again overturned by the state's highest court. A third jury reimposed the death sentence in 1997.

Metro on 10/09/2015

Upcoming Events