Posted on 11/05/2009 6:25:53 AM PST by La Lydia
In a two-track effort to stop the November 10 execution of John Allen Muhammad, sentenced to death after his conviction for 10 killings 7 years ago, Attorney Jon Sheldon has filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court and a motion for a stay of execution so that the court can review compelling evidence of Muhammad`s "severe mental illness" Sheldon also requested that Governor Tim Kaine commute Muhammad`s sentence to life without parole because of the severe mental illness.
"The public has been protected from John Muhammad for the past 7 years," said Sheldon, "and a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole would insure that the public would continue to be protected."
"Execution is simply not justified in this case," Sheldon said, "and it is because of Muhammad`s severe mental illness." Sheldon also stated that "the jurors would not have sentenced him to death if they had received clear instructions and known of his severe mental illness.."
Sheldon said that a psychiatrist has diagnosed Muhammad as "psychotic, delusional and paranoid and that he suffers from schizophrenia." He said that neuropsychological brain imaging applications have demonstrated that John Muhammad has neuropsychological deficits that consistent with schizophrenia...
Sheldon also that MRI brain scans of Muhammad show that "he has three congenital malformations in his brain, two of which are found with greater frequency in people with schizophrenia, and one of which is a shrunken cortex, confirming the brain damage." ...
"Elizabeth Young, a juror in the Muhammad case, has described how the evidence of John Muhammad's severe mental illness was never heard by her jury, and that this evidence with clear jury instructions would have led her to vote for a verdict of life in prison without the possibility of parole," Sheldon said. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Somebody gets too them after the fact and beats on them hard enough with guilt trip, or even money, and they figure what the heck? and change their story.
She's a fool, she's opening herself up to a lot of abuse from the people who lived in white-knuckled fear for months. My mother in law and my brother in law were right in the middle of this -- one of the shootings took place less than a mile from my brother in law's house.
Jailhouse Muslim, isn’t it? Did he kill people? Hang him. Public Square. Educate the children as to what happens when you take a human life. Then tomorrow, hang him again, until it is done nine times.
Geeze flippin’ louizzzeee...
Just give him a last meal of “cheezy puffs” and secretly change them out to pork rinds...
He might actually like them...
I just hope they use the needle dipped in pig’s blood to sterilize it...
Yeah, I just don’t have a lot of sympathy for this extreme waste of time and space...
>compelling evidence of Muhammad`s “severe mental illness”
Reuters is the expert on that.
Hang the bastards right after the trial....save us MILLIONS of dollars for food, internet fees, cable TV, air-conditioning, phones, etc.
He should have been executed the day after his appeals were exhausted.
Just fry him already.
May he beg Jesus Christ for mercy.
So sad too bad. If you had sentenced your ten victims to life in prison instead of death, perhaps we would consider the same for you.
You should have heard her on the radio. IQ in the mid-range double digits. If he was mentally acute to get away with that as long as he did, and to hide, he knew that what he was doing was wrong. Sorry, but the mentally ill argument is a dog that doesn’t hunt.
Schizophrenia is a very serious mental illness. If I recall correctly, the unibomber was afflicted with schizophrenia too. I don’t see any need to execute people who actually have a serious case of schizophrenia. There is a danger, however, that defense lawyers could try to invent cases of schizophrenia to avoid the death penalty or to try to get their defendants imprisoned in a mental hospital instead of a prison. So the standards of evidence to prove mental illness need to be very strict.
Not jailhouse Muslim. Muslim all along.
No evidence of schizophrenia was ever presented at his trial. Nor was it used in his first appeals. His schizophrenia argument emerged years later, after his conviction and sentence. And there is reason to believe his lawyer doctor-shopped until he came up with someone who would make this claim.
Islam IS a mental illness.
If somebody is a violent schizophrenic who has committed multiple murders, then he is too dangerous to be confined in a mental hospital and probably too dangerous to be allowed to remain in prison since he will put other prisoners and staff at serious risk. Deterrence is absolutely ineffective, and 'cruel and unusual' rules deny the prison the ability to keep him in permanent solitary and chained to the wall.
Besides, iirc a 'guilty but mentally ill' or insanity plea has to be entered at the time of trial.
And even a squish governor is going to be aware of the mood of the public . . . believe me the reign of terror this man perpetrated has NOT been forgotten in N. VA, and won't be for a long time.
The real plan, as told by Lee Boyd Malvo (Wiki)He's as 'mentally ill' as any Jihadist.
(scroll down, near bottom of page)
Lawyers always argue that their client is mentally ill simply because he's a "sociopath" and can't conform his behavior to the rules of society. Of course by that standard ANYBODY who breaks ANY law is mentally ill!
I don’t think it’s accurate to say Kaine is lukewarm on capital punishment. VA is 2nd in the country for executions, and Kaine has only stayed 1 execution out of 8 or 9 since he took office.
Quick, someone stick a needle in his arm, before a wise Latina can give him the benefit of her unique experiences.
Allah Fubar and all that stuff...
BINGO!!! Best response yet. My hubby thinks it
would be better to run em thru a chipper/shredder and
use em as fertilizer.
I do see the need, if they went to great lengths to kill numerous people with concerted planning, effort and preparation.
Not knowing what they were doing is one thing; some just don’t know the difference.
Knowing full well, to the point of preparing elaborate camouflage, recruiting & training a triggerman, selecting & offing more than a dozen targets, doing so over weeks/months, and sending multiple messages to the police about the actions ... he knew what he was doing. Even if there were multiple personalities involved, one did it and the others didn’t stop it.
Notice that the article says, “two track effort.” The other “track” is, he's asking for a new trial, saying his lawyer was incompetent. If he gets a new trial, they will introduce the “evidence” of his mental illness.
For the third straight year, Kaine vetoed legislation that would have expanded the death penalty in Virginia by making accomplices in a murder - not just the triggerman - eligible for execution.
Kaine personally opposes the death penalty but vowed to carry out the sanction when he ran for governor in 2005.
He vowed to "carry out the sanction" because he knew it could affect his election. I will, however, give him points for sticking to his word once he was elected.
And so is also liberalism!!!
I’m curious.
Does anyone know for sure why they conduct lethal injections with a sterilized needle?
Is his attorney admitting that Mohammedanism is insane?
Someone explain this to me. I don’t get it.
If this guy went out and killed these people he should pay the price - regardless of his mental state. If he was sane then he knew what he was doing and should die. If he had a “mental illness” at the time of the killings, why should he not pay the same price? The victims are just as dead. And if he’s mentally incompetent he might just go out and do it again. Off the pr*ck!
A lot of people have had bad childhoods and DON’T go out and kill innocents....thanks for listening...SSZ
He was sane enough to plan the attacks, to bore a hole in the trunk of his car to fire the gun out of, to hide in plain sight for more than three weeks, etc. He knew what he was doing was wicked and evil. He kept doing it. He committed similar crimes elsewhere.
It's gotten so bad here, the new appellate counsel puts the old counsel on the stand and he testifies without a blush, "Yes, I was ineffective."
If they start disbarring them for incompetence, maybe this will stop. But probably not before.
He is a convert to the Nation of Islam. Shocking, I know.
Personally I could care less if he’s mentally ill, and was at the time of the shootings, and was beaten every day as a child.
He murdered a BUNCH of people. Put him to death, NOW !
Of course he’s not keen on it, he said so that himself. I respect him for the fact that he stayed only one execution even though he opposes it for religious views. To me, it shows that he can put aside his personal views, and still do the job. We will see what the future brings for the expanded death penalty with our new governor. Lukewarm, is not what I would call Virginia’s stance on the death penalty.
Probably because they dispose of the old ones, and needles come pre-packaged in sterile wrappings.
Amen.
Who said Virginia’s stance on the death penalty is lukewarm? I didn’t. The people of the state are all for it, particularly in a case like this one. I said Kaine is lukewarm at best. And I said he is not keen on it.
I know - But I was trying to make a Gallagher-esque observation. ;-P
You are correct, of course. The new “competent”attorney will call the old “incompetent” attorney, probably after paying him nicely for “consultation. And Mo gets a new trial, with previously “unknown” evidence!
For one thing, an attorney testifying "yes, I was incompetent" is merely giving a conclusory statement that is not evidence of incompetence. There has to be hard evidence that he messed up. Plus, tactical and strategic decisions (such as not presenting an insanity defense) are not ineffective assistance. And then there has to be hard evidence that his error affected the outcome of the trial.
Most ineffective assistance claims don't get very far. It's just the current fashion in last-ditch appeals.
Anybody who is involved in overturning this conviction is going to find themselves radioactive politically. Are judges elected in Virginia? If so, they're going to be looking for a way to uphold this conviction, because the public outrage will be overwhelming if they overturn it.
Of course, no telling what the U.S. Supremes might do if it gets to them eventually. They aren't beholden to anybody.
He deserves the same mercy he showed to the human beings he randomly hunted down like animals. No mercy. Period.
Once again, you are correct, of course! Nonetheless, that is the attempt that is being made. We can only await the outcome of this strategy.
Desparate lame stalling attempt. Unless he wants to call his rel of peace a mental illness.
Or how the profilers claimed the shooter was an angry white male..that could also be a mental illness.
:-p
It won't be over until the attending doctor signs the death certificate.
Crosslinked:
Beltway Sniper Shootings- FR THREAD ARCHIVES
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/768023/posts?page=1
Cu/PB, 115 grains, administered intracranially via the foramen magnum...
Cu/Pb
The Defense could have had MRIs before the trial and brought them as evidence of Muhammad’s mental illness.
The problem is, how do you show that the MRI indicates a real Mental Illness OR that it indicates what Muhammadanism/Islam does to the brain?
After the fact information, if not DNA evidence that exonerates the person, does not change anything about the verdict.
These guys were caught red-handed. The teenage boy should also have gotten the death penalty. Islam is a cult that uses toddlers wearing bomb-vests to blow up people. A teenager who kills people while a Muzlem should not get life in prison. All he’s going to do is convert angry prisoners to the vengeful cult. Islam must be stamped out. And the only way to do that when a Muzlem has been convicted of murder is to convert them or put them on death row.
Give him a “Lubyanka Brain Haemorrhage” ...
The little rat-bastard Malvo was not eligible for the death penalty, due to his age. That's the law. So, like it or not, he should NOT have gotten the death penalty.
Instead he gets to live out the rest of his natural life, rotting in prison, on our dime.
Oh, well ...
He WON'T shoot any more innocent folks going about their daily peaceable business.
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