Ohio, sospesa esecuzione di uno schizofrenico Lucasville

 16 maggio

 Gli aghi erano gi� stati inseriti nelle braccia di Jay D. Scott perl'iniezione letale, questa notte, quando la sentenza di un giudice della Corte d'Appello federale ha sospeso l'esecuzione.Per Jay D. Scott, schizofrenico, condannato per l'omicidio di un negoziante nel 1983, � il secondo salvataggio all'ultimo minuto quest'anno. Il suo caso � al centro di una disputa legale; gli avvocati sostengono che la sua malattia mentale rende la pena di morte una "punizione crudele e inusuale",secondo l'Ottavo emendamento della Costituzione. La Corte Suprema federale aveva rifiutato di ascoltare il caso.Invece un membro del sesto circuito della corte d'Appello ha richiesto che l'intera corte si pronunci sul caso. Questo significa che la sospensione dell'esecuzione � solo temporanea: due ore prima, tre giudici della corte d'appello avevano approvato la sentenza di un giudice che permetteva l'esecuzione.Secondo la legge dell'Ohio, un detenuto pu� essere giustiziato anche se malato, quando conosce le accuse contro di lui, sa perch� viene giustiziato,e sa che morir� come risultato della sentenza. In Usa 14 Stati proibiscono l'applicazione della pena capitale alle persone affette da handicap mentale.

Ohio Man Spared Execution for Second Time in Month

 LUCASVILLE, Ohio  - For the second time in a month, a schizophrenic who murdered an Ohio delicatessen owner had his execution halted minutes before he was to die after a court ordered a delay on Tuesday.The Ohio Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, based in Cincinnati, issued a ``verbal stay'' just as Jay Scott was being prepared for death by lethal injection.A similar stay issued by another court on April 17 saved his life minutes before another planned execution. The central issue in his case has been whether his mental illness allows him to comprehend what is happening to him.Scott, 48, has long history of untreated illness including schizophrenia. Had he been executed, he would have been only the second person to suffer the death penalty in Ohio since the state reinstated it in 1981, and the first to die in that time against his will. Wilford Berry, who voluntarily dropped his appeals, was executed on Feb. 19, 1999.Scott had earlier on Tuesday consumed a ``final'' meal of fish and a soft drink at the Southern Ohio Correctional Center in Lucasville, prison officials said.Scott was found guilty and sentenced to death for the 1983 slaying of Cleveland delicatessen owner Vinnie Prince, 74, during a planned robbery with three other men.He was subsequently given a second death sentence for killing security guard Alexander Jones at a restaurant just 13 hours after the first slaying. That penalty was thrown out by an appeals court because a juror had read news accounts of Scott's earlier death sentence.One of 11 children born to alcoholic and abusive parents, Scott never received treatment for his mental illness, although a brother, also schizophrenic, has been in and out of institutions.Scott's attorneys argued that his original lawyers in the delicatessen murder provided inadequate counsel by failing to raise the issue of his mental fitness during the sentencing phase that might have spared his life.While in prison, Scott has displayed increasingly ``bizarre'' behavior, including screaming fits and paranoid fantasies, according to a psychiatrist hired by Scott's lawyers. Ohio law bars the execution of an inmate who cannot understand his death sentence or the reason it was applied. But appeals on that basis to a number of courts failed. Tuesday's delay was invoked so that the entire bench of the Sixth Circuit could review his last-ditch appeal.Ohio is not among the 14 states that have forbidden executions of the mentally retarded, an issue that the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) has agreed to address in a North Carolina case.Scott was less than an hour away from being executed on April 17 but the Ohio Supreme Court intervened to give a lower court time to consider the competency issue.But the lower court and the state supreme court ruled against him and Republican Gov. Robert Taft refused to grant clemency, declaring that Scott's mental illness did not prevent him from understanding the legal proceedings against him.In declaring he would not grant clemency, Taft said the defense's decision not to introduce Scott's mental illness as a mitigating circumstance was a valid legal strategy. Taft said evidence of Scott's violent criminal history would have countered that argument.