A lawyer for a man set to be executed Tuesday asked the Georgia parole board and a state judge to reconsider his client's case in light of new evidence.
Warren Lee Hill's lawyer, Brian Kammer, on Friday filed a renewed application for a clemency hearing with the Board of Pardons and Paroles and a petition for a writ of habeas corpus with the Butts County Superior Court. The state attorney general's office declined to comment on the filings.
Kammer has long argued that Hill is mentally disabled and should not be executed because the execution of mentally disabled offenders is prohibited by state law and a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
The state has consistently argued that Hill's defense has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he is mentally disabled. Hill's lawyers have said that burden of proof is virtually impossible to meet. But Georgia's strictest-in-the-nation standard for proving mental disability has repeatedly been upheld by state and federal courts.
In his filings Friday, Kammer includes sworn statements from the three doctors who examined Hill in 2000 and testified for the state that he was not mentally disabled. The doctors write in their new statements that they were rushed in their evaluation at the time and that they have acquired additional experience and there have been scientific developments in the intervening 12 years. All three reviewed facts and documents in the case and write that they now believe that Hill is mentally disabled.
