Group urges clemency for death-row inmate
BY ANDY DAVIS
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/232878/
Posted on Thursday, July 31, 2008

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An advocacy group for the developmentally disabled Wednesday urged Gov. Mike Beebe to grant clemency to death-row inmate Frank Williams Jr., saying the evidence is “overwhelming” that Williams is mentally retarded.

The Arc Arkansas issued the plea in a letter to Beebe and the state Parole Board, which will hear arguments on Williams ’ clemency petition Monday before making a recommendation to Beebe.

“Mr. Williams’ family and educational histories provide overwhelming evidence of his mental retardation,” the group said in the letter, which adds that “there is abundant, credible and compelling evidence of his condition.” Arkansas banned death sentences for the mentally retarded in 1993, and the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that such executions are barred under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Williams, 42, was convicted in the 1992 shooting death of Clyde Spence, 49, a farmer in Lafayette County he had worked for under a prison work-release program.

Williams was sentenced to death in February 1993, a month before the Arkansas law banning death sentences for the retarded was signed into law.

The Arc Arkansas, which provides housing, life-skills training and other services for people with developmental disabilities, decided to send the letters after reviewing a mental evaluation and other documents provided by Williams’ attorney, said Cynthia Stone, the group’s chief operating officer.

Williams “has suffered from some very bad luck in that this was never brought out at any of his trials, and that’s sad” Stone said. “At this point, someone’s got to speak out.” She said the group’s board supported sending the letters but didn’t take a formal vote. Williams’ case is the first in which the group has taken a stand since Arkansas’ ban on executing the retarded was passed.

Beebe spokesman Matt De-Cample said the governor will review “any input” he gets, but he added that mental retardation is “a legal determination made by the courts.” Under the 1993 Arkansas law, Arkansas Code 5-4-618, a person with an IQ of 65 or below is presumed retarded. The definition also includes someone with “significantly subaverage intellectual functioning or impairment in adaptive functioning manifest in the developmental period,” accompanied by a “deficit in adaptive behavior.” At the request of Williams ’ public defender, Julie Brain, forensic psychologist Ricardo Weinstein of Encinitas, Calif., examined Williams in June 2005 and interviewed his relatives, childhood friends and two of his teachers. He found that Williams, who has an IQ of 75, is retarded under Arkansas’ standard. He noted Williams was held back in school three times before dropping out in the 10 th grade.

A court has never ruled on the issue.

Williams’ court-appointed attorney, Alvin Schay of Little Rock, filed a petition for federal court review in 2002, but he didn’t raise the issue of mental retardation.

Brain attempted to raise the issue after taking over the case in 2004, but the federal district and appeals courts rejected her petition under a law barring multiple requests for federal review.

Williams, scheduled to die Sept. 9, is the first Arkansan set for execution scheduled after a U. S. Supreme Court ruling in April that upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection.

He and other death-row inmates have a pending challenge in federal court that contends Arkansas’ injection procedures don’t conform to the Supreme Court ruling.