Two death row inmates cite mental testing in new appeal

Two Arkansas death row inmates applied Friday to the U.S. Supreme Court for relief in what is the latest appeal over the standards under which Arkansas courts and prison officials review claims of mental incompetence.

A petition for a writ of certiorari was filed on behalf of inmate Bruce Earl Ward. It argues that the Arkansas Supreme Court has been incorrectly applying 30 years of case law by holding that psychiatric evaluations performed at the State Hospital in Little Rock meet the minimum standards set by the U.S. Supreme Court for an indigent defendant’s right to mental evaluation.

Federal Public Defender April Golden of the Capital Habeas Unit in Little Rock, said a similar petition would be filed on behalf of Don Davis, another convicted murderer on death row.

Earlier this year, the justices on the Arkansas Supreme Court declined to reverse their previous rulings rejecting Ward’s and Davis’ claims, thus prompting appeals to the U.S. high court.

Davis has no stays placed on the imposition of his death sentence, and he faces the possibility of having an execution date set by the governor if no court intervenes.

Ward has a stay in place from another case regarding his mental fitness for execution.

Regardless of the pair’s legal maneuverings, the state doesn’t have the ability to execute anyone. A state prison spokesman said Friday that the Department of Correction lacks one of the three drugs needed to carry out lethal injections.

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge’s office on Friday said it would “continue to vigorously defend the lawful guilty verdicts and death sentences” given to Ward and Davis.

Ward, 61, was convicted in 1990 of fatally strangling Rebecca Doss, a night-shift clerk at a convenience store on Rodney Parham Road in Little Rock.

Davis, 55, received a death sentence two years later for killing Jane Daniel during a robbery in her Rogers home.

While awaiting trial, lawyers in each of their cases sought access to psychological evaluations. Ward spent two weeks at the State Hospital in Little Rock, and a doctor later testified that Ward had antisocial personality disorder, according to court records.

An appointed “state-sponsored mental-health expert” diagnosed Davis with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Neither man’s mental issues were determined by state experts to rise to a level that would make them ineligible for the death penalty.

On appeal, Ward and Davis argue that past U. S. Supreme Court decisions should have made them eligible for examination from court-appointed psychologists who were independent of state prosecutors and who could have assisted the defense at trial and sentencing.

“Bruce Earl Ward’s mental illness has been at the forefront of his legal case for nearly three decades,” attorneys wrote in his petition, specifying that Ward experiences “grandiose delusions” about his case.

After being scheduled as the first pair in a series of four planned double executions last April, Ward and Davis were awarded temporary reprieves from Arkansas justices while the U.S. Supreme Court decided McWilliams v. Dunn. In that Alabama case, the justices held that “the state must provide a defendant with access to a mental health expert who is sufficiently available to the defense and independent from the prosecution.” Arkansas ended up carrying out four of the eight planned executions.

Earlier this year, when considering the appeals of Ward and Davis in light of McWilliams, the Arkansas Supreme Court said the experts who were provided to the inmates met that standard.

Now their attorneys are asking the U. S. justices to again settle the question of how independent court-appointed mental health experts must be, a right the court first recognized in the 1985 case Ake v. Oklahoma.

After receiving Ward’s petition, the U.S. Supreme Court has given the state until July 2 to respond with its arguments.