Global Courant 2023-04-16 16:56:38
CHICAGO (AP) — When the director of US prisons came to visit the jail in Terre Haute, Indianathis past week she stopped by federal death row where Bruce Webster sits in a 12-by-7-foot solitary cell for 23 hours a day.
Webster shouldn’t be there. A federal judge in Indiana ruled in 2019 that the 49-year-old has an IQ of the order of severe intellectual disability and thus cannot be put to death.
But four years later, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have not transferred him to a less strict ward or another prison.
Why? His own attorney, who won a rare legal victory by convincing a court to overturn Webster’s 1996 death sentence for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 16-year-old Texas girl, says she is baffled.
“How can I not get this man off death row?” an exasperated Monica Foster said in a recent interview. “Well, I did get him off death row. But why can’t I physically take him off death row?”
When asked about Webster’s continued placement on death row, a Justice Department official said only that “the Bureau of Prisons is considering Mr. Webster’s designation.”
Webster’s case illustrates the chronic bureaucracy in the prison system and the difficulties of getting someone off death row. There is sometimes extra reluctance to act on death row inmates, given the nature of prisoners’ crimes.
In Webster’s case, he and three accomplices kidnapped a sister of a rival drug trafficker in 1994, making their way to an apartment in Arlington, Texas, while Lisa Rene was frantically calling 911. a shovel and buried her alive.
Colette Peters, director of the Bureau of Prisons, has said yes committed to reform. Her visit to Terre Haute was part of regular inspections of US prisons. It came months after one lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana trying to end the solitary confinement of federal death row inmates, saying the practice causes serious psychological damage.
Story continues
Several death row inmates told The Associated Press by email that Peters stopped by their unit on Tuesday and spoke with some of the inmates. It is unknown if she saw Webster or discussed his case.
The Biden administration should view Webster’s move as an uncontroversial, if modest, step toward fulfillment President Joe Biden’s campaign promise Unpleasant stop the federal executions forever, Foster argued.
“This case is a no-brainer,” the Indianapolis-based federal defense attorney said. “There is no political accountability whatsoever to do the right thing here and get him off death row.”
Webster, who wants to be transferred to a prison near his hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, must be sentenced. It should be a formality, because life is the only punishment available.
When his lawyers and the Justice Department asked in a 2021 joint motion for a U.S. judge in Texas, where Webster was tried in 1996, to impeach him, the judge declined, saying he had no jurisdiction.
Judge Terry Means also rebuked his Indiana counterpart, Judge William Lawrence, for rejecting Webster’s death sentence, saying Lawrence had “dismissed” the jurors’ findings, including most who rejected Webster’s intellectual disability claims .
“That judgment is final,” the government said of Means’ ruling, adding that it is the department’s position “that Mr. Webster is not currently subject to a valid death penalty.”
The responsibility for getting Webster off death row rests entirely with the Justice Department, Foster said.
The Ministry of Justice executed 13 American death row inmates, some of them Webster’s friends, in the closing months of Donald Trump’s presidency. While Biden’s Justice Department has paused the executions and reversed decisions to seek death sentences in some cases, she continues to seek in others.
Lawrence based his Webster statement on Atkins vs. Virginiaa landmark 2002 Supreme Court ruling that ruled that the execution of persons with intellectual disabilities violated Eighth Amendment protections against “cruel and unusual” punishment.
That decision has not prevented some inmates with such disabilities from being executed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. It identifies 25 cases where that has happened since that ruling, including two federal prisoners executed under Trump. Alfred Bourgeois And Corey Johnson.
Whether Webster qualified as mentally retarded focused on three questions: Was his IQ significantly below average, did he demonstrate an inability to learn basic skills, and was the onset of the disability apparent before age 18?
In his statement, Lawrence cited tests that put Webster’s IQ between 50 and 65, below the intellectual disability benchmark score of 70. The average is 100.
During arguments, Webster’s lawyers said he relied on others to tie his shoelaces late into childhood, and that he had trouble playing card games as a teenager because he couldn’t distinguish between clubs and spades.
Prosecutors accused Webster of playing dumb. They said he deliberately answered IQ questions incorrectly to avoid the death penalty. They said evidence of his fitness included how, while in prison, he discovered how to break locks on a food cooker to slip into a women’s ward.
“Webster has also been able to keep a job, albeit criminal in nature,” a government filing added. “Being a successful drug dealer is no less demanding than having a number of legitimate jobs.”
The decisive piece of evidence, however, was newly obtained pre-murder Social Security records, which showed that Webster’s IQ was within the range of the mentally retarded. That evidence, despite requests for it, was not made available at his trial.
Foster worries about what could happen if Webster doesn’t get off death row soon. While previous rulings should prevent this, she fears that if Trump wins the presidency, his administration could try to reinstate the death sentence.
When that happens, she said, “I’m afraid it can be carried out.”
__
Follow Michael Tarm on Twitter at @mtarm.
