[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----SOUTH CAROLINA

[Rick Halperin]

May 30

SOUTH CAROLINA:

David Mark Hill has given up his appeals and is scheduled to be executed
on June 6th in South Carolina, despite concerns that he suffered from
serious mental illness at the time his crime was committed as well as in
the years since. Over 10% of all executions in the U.S. have been
"volunteers." Given the rate of error in capital cases, there is a
significant possibility that a number of "volunteers" like David Hill
could have won appeals and had their sentences commuted. Please call on
Governor Sanford to prevent this execution and to support a moratorium on
all executions in South Carolina.

URGENT ACTION APPEAL - From Amnesty International USA

30 May 2008

UA 148/08 Death penalty

USA (South Carolina) David Mark Hill (m), white, aged 47

David Hill is scheduled to be executed in South Carolina on 6 June. He was
sentenced to death in 2000 for the murder of three social workers in an
office shooting in 1996. David Hill has given up his appeals.

Josie Curry, Michael Gregory and James Riddle were shot dead by David Hill
in the office of the Department of Social Services (DSS) in North Augusta,
South Carolina, on 16 September 1996. The next morning police found David
Hill lying on railway tracks not far from the DSS building. He had shot
himself in the head, but survived, with critical injuries.

David Hill was brought to trial in 2000. A doctor testified that although
Hill had sustained frontal lobe damage to his brain when he shot himself,
and was suffering from a degree of memory loss, he could understand the
charges against him and would be able to follow the proceedings if he paid
attention. Several experts testified that David Hill was suffering from
serious mental health problems at the time of the crime, and was
apparently not taking his medication on the day of the shootings. A
psychiatrist who had been treating him in the months before the crime
testified that Hill was suffering from three major mental disorders:
post-traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder and major depressive
disorder. He stated that a number of traumatic events in Hill's life had
contributed to this, including his near-drowning when he was a teenager,
his guilt over causing a car accident when he was 18 which killed his
sister, witnessing an explosion at his workplace, and the stress of his
daughter being left paraplegic in a car accident in 1995 (she died in
1998). David Hill made a number of suicide attempts in the months before
the crime. In July 1996, police had been called to his home when he was
threatening to kill himself with a shotgun. He was eventually talked out
of it by his psychiatrist and taken for treatment for depression. The
shootings at the DSS office took place about a week after his
three-year-old daughter and his twin two-year-old sons had been taken into
DSS custody.

The jury returned a death sentence and Hill's automatic appeal was
rejected by the South Carolina Supreme Court in 2004. In May 2007, David
Hill wrote to the prosecuting authorities asking them to assist him to
"drop the rest of my appeals and have an execution date set." The
following month, he changed his mind, but in July 2007 again decided to
abandon his appeals. A hearing was held before a judge in August 2007 to
establish whether Hill was competent to make this decision. A psychiatrist
testified that Hill had suffered from severe depression and other mental
disorders in the past, but that these were now in remission and he was not
currently on medication for any mental illness. She testified that
although he had sustained brain damage and neurological impairments as a
result of shooting himself in 1996, he had made a good recovery.

The psychiatrist testified that David Hill's decision to drop his appeals
appeared to be rational, that he knew the consequences of his decision and
even believed that he could win an appeal if he proceeded to challenge his
death sentence. Hill had apparently decided to wait until his father,
whose health was failing, would no longer be aware of his son's decision
to waive his appeals. After the father was taken to hospital and placed on
"do not resuscitate" status, David Hill decided that he could now take the
decision to expedite his own death. The psychiatrist also concluded that
Hill's religious beliefs as a Mormon had contributed to his decision. Hill
himself testified that "part of my religious beliefs are that if you kill
somebody, you shed somebody else's blood, that your blood has to be shed
or you have to die in order to be forgiven for that, and that's one of my
concerns and then there's some health issues that I'm dealing with
that's...bothersome at times...There's not really one big reason. There is
just -- several different factors." The judge found that Hill was
competent to waive his appeals, and this was upheld by the state Supreme
Court on 28 April 2008.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

About one in 10 of the more than 1,100 men and women put to death in the
USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977 had given up their
appeals (see Prisoner-assisted homicide -- more 'volunteer' executions
loom, May 2007, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/087/2007).
Any number of factors may contribute to a condemned inmate's decision not
to pursue appeals, including mental disorder, physical illness, remorse,
bravado, religious belief, a quest for notoriety, the severity of
conditions of confinement, including prolonged isolation and lack of
physical contact visits, the bleak alternative of life imprisonment
without the possibility of parole, or pessimism about appeal prospects. In
some cases it appears that the detainee may have committed the crime in
order to receive a death sentence. Pre-trial or post-conviction suicidal
ideation seems to motivate the decision-making of some such inmates,
including some whose abusive childhoods have left them traumatized or
suffering mental health problems. With such cases in mind, the execution
of "volunteers" is often compared to state-assisted suicide. However,
"prisoner-assisted homicide" may be a more appropriate description of this
phenomenon.

Rational or irrational, an inmate's decision to waive appeals may simply
stem from a desire to gain a semblance of control over a situation in
which they are otherwise powerless. As the US Supreme Court recognized
over a century ago, "when a prisoner sentenced by a court to death is
confined in the penitentiary awaiting the execution of the sentence, one
of the most horrible feelings to which he can be subjected during that
time is the uncertainty during the whole of it...as to the precise time
when his execution shall take place." One way for a prisoner to end this
cruel uncertainty is to ask to be killed by the state. Given the rate of
error found in capital cases on appeal, if the more than 120 "volunteers"
executed since 1977 had pursued their appeals, there is a significant
possibility that a number of them would have had their death sentences
overturned to prison terms. To look at it another way, the phenomenon of
"volunteers" contributes to the arbitrariness that is a part of the death
penalty in the USA.

There have been 1,102 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed
there in 1977, 37 of them in South Carolina. Today, 137 countries are
abolitionist in law or practice. In late 2007, the UN General Assembly
passed a landmark resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on
executions. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases,
unconditionally (see 'The pointless and needless extinction of life': USA
should now look beyond lethal injection issue to wider death penalty
questions, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/031/2008/en).

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:

- expressing sympathy for the relatives and co-workers of Josie Curry,
Michael Gregory and James Riddle, and explaining that you are not seeking
to excuse the manner of their deaths or to downplay the suffering caused;

- opposing the execution of David Hill and the death penalty in general;

- noting the global abolitionist trend and last year's vote at the United
Nations General Assembly calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions;

- calling on the governor to support a moratorium on executions in South
Carolina and to work towards abolition of the death penalty in his state.

APPEALS TO:

Governor Mark Sanford
Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 12267
Columbia, SC 29211
USA

Fax: 1 803 734 5167
Email: via website:

http://www.scgovernor.com/cont act/email/default.htm.

Salutation: Dear Governor

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.

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END OF URGENT ACTION APPEAL

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