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Variety in the Heartland |
Inmates Asks For Execution
03/07/10 MRC?AP
A pair of Kentucky death row inmates are seeking to end their appeals and potentially hasten their own executions, possibly under a new set of rules for lethal injection that the state is pushing for.
The inmates, Shawn William Windsor and James Hunt, are both pursuing lawsuits against their public defenders in Franklin Circuit Court in an effort to fire the attorneys and waive their remaining appeals. The Kentucky Supreme Court is reviewing the criminal cases of both men, with rulings in their cases possible later this month.
Should both men be successful and be executed, they would become the third and fourth Kentucky inmates to die at their own request.
The suits come as Kentucky is pursuing readoption of it's lethal injection protocol. A legislative subcommittee is scheduled to consider the method on Monday as it makes it's way to Governor Steve Beshear for eventual rejection or approval. There's no sign in the men's appeals, though, that their effort is linked to the new protocals.
Kentucky is attempting to re-enact the protocol used for the three-drug cocktail used to execute inmates after the Kentucky Supreme Court halted executions last year. The high court said the state improperly adopted it's protocol.
The proposed protocol includes several provisions dealing with what to do if a volunteer changes his mind once the execution starts. The proposed protocol allows an inmate to contact his attorney and the warden to notify the Department of Corrections commissioner about the change, with the commissioner telling the governor and courts.
About 12 percent of the roughly 1,600 inmates executed in the United States since 1976 abandoned their appeals and asked for their sentences to be carried out, according to Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center and an adjunct law professor at Catholic University in Washington. Each time, the inmate either fired the defense lawyer or told them to stop filing appeals.
Because several inmates are at the end of their appeals, Windsor, 46, and Hunt, 62, may not be the first executed if the protocol is readopted and approved and they are successful in their lawsuits. But, both inmates said they are intent on waiving their appeals, which would open the door to an execution.
Kentucky has executed three people since 1976, two of whom waived all or part of their appeals to speed up their executions.
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