Please note, this is a text only version for the web site, the original letter appeared on Human Rights Watch letterhead and was signed by Michael Bochenek. February 16, 2002 Mr. Walter S. Ray, Chair
Dear Mr. Ray: We write to urge the Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute the death sentence of Alexander Williams, who is scheduled for execution on February 20. Diagnosed with schizophrenia-a profound psychiatric disorder that affects the processing of thoughts and beliefs and nearly every level of functioning-Mr. Williams is on death row for a crime he committed at the age of seventeen. International law prohibits the execution of those who were below the age of eighteen at the time of their crimes. Only the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, and the United States have carried out such executions in the last three years. Even in the United States, juvenile offenders are rarely put to death. Nationally, a total of eighteen juvenile offenders have been executed since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Of the approximately 20,000 executions carried out in the history of the United States, only 376-less than 2 percent-are known to have been of juvenile offenders, according to criminologist Victor Streib. Georgia led the nation in the executions of juvenile offenders from the mid-eighteenth century until 1957, but in the forty-five years since, it has carried out only one execution of a juvenile offender. As a result, the execution of a juvenile offender in Georgia is now an aberration. When juvenile offenders are sentenced to death in Georgia, they are disproportionately black defendants who are convicted of killing white victims. These facts have led Professor Streib to observe, "It can be said that the death penalty for juvenile offenders in Georgia is essentially limited to those who kill white victims." The disproportionate impact of race in death sentencing is not limited to Georgia; in August, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination noted the "disturbing correlation" between race and the imposition of the death penalty across the United States, urging the country to ensure that racial bias does not taint the sentencing process. Mr. Williams' case also raises concerns because his serious mental illness and history of severe abuse as a child were never presented to the jury. His defense lawyer made no efforts to investigate these facts; at Mr. Williams' sentencing phase, his lawyer offered no mitigating evidence to the jury and made a presentation that lasted only fifteen minutes. The attorney has since been removed from the states courts' list of those qualified to handle criminal cases. The rarity of juvenile offender executions, the possibility that race may have played an impermissible role in the sentencing process, and the flagrantly ineffective assistance that Mr. Williams received at trial should lead the Board to commute his death sentence. As Justice Stewart observed in Furman v. Georgia, the Constitution "cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this unique penalty to be so wantonly and so freakishly imposed" (408 U.S. 238, 310). Indeed, a person who was mentally ill and a child at the time of his crime can never meet the extraordinary level of blameworthiness that is required to impose a death sentence. As former First Lady Rosalynn Carter wrote to you in July 2000, "imposing the death penalty on mentally ill children should be unthinkable in a civilized society." We urge the Board to uphold basic principles of justice and morality by commuting Alexander Williams' sentence. Sincerely, Michael Bochenek
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