Edwin Hart Turner was convicted of murdering two men in 1995 and sentenced to death in Mississippi in 1997. He will be executed on February 8th at 6 p.m.
His attorney has requested that a federal judge halt his execution until he receives an appropriate psychiatric evaluation. His face bears the scars of a failed suicide attempt at age 18. The ACLU recently blogged about the case, in a post entitled "Too Crazy to Kill." His attorneys have never denied his guilt, but rather insist that he is seriously mentally ill.
I am unqualified to examine the details of the case and its legal implications, and the media has not widely discussed the case. However, it appears that Mr. Turner is mentally ill, although it is unclear why this has not been demonstrated earlier. It would be difficult to argue that he was not mentally ill at the time he attempted suicide, and highly likely with this history that he remains so. There are reports that he has stayed in psychiatric units on multiple occasions and, perhaps most disturbingly, always wore a towel around his face to hide his scars. This towel, worn on the day the crimes were committed, made him easily recognizable. Regardless, the response to the tragic murders and the immense suffering of the victims' loved ones should not be a mandate of death.
(My research on this topic led to the observation that the Mississippi Department of Corrections has an unusual policy of denoting "complexion" in identifying inmates. This is not a common practice, but I was unable to find information on the history of this practice. This is in addition to specifying inmates' "race." "Medium" appears to be used for individuals who are either black or white (no other races were specified of the cases I reviewed), but "fair" and "light" appear to correlate to a white ("WH") identification, while "dark" corresponds to a racial definition of black ("BL"). Please see the Mississippi DOC website.)
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