Columbia, SC (AP) -After his best friend and four of his prisoners from his death have been killed for less than a year, a prisoner from South Carolina wants to become his own lawyer, which would probably mean his own performance in weeks or months.
A Federal Judge has ordered a 45-day delay in James Robertson’s request to talk to another lawyer and make sure he really wants to fire his own lawyers and deal with the likely lethal consequences of his decision.
The 51 -year -old Robertson has been in death since 1999, after killing her two parents at their Rock Hill home. He defeated his father with the end of the hammer’s nail and a baseball bat and a stabbed mother. He tried to look like a robbery in the hope that he would receive his part of their $ 2.2 million property, prosecutors said.
Robertson has fired his lawyers before. Not long after, he arrived at the death of death, he wanted to file his complaints after a card playing a friend never appealed his death sentence to set fire to a van with his daughter outside his ex -wife’s house.
Letter from a prisoner of death
A letter on one page of Robinson landed in the federal judge’s mailbox on April 7, four days before South Carolina executed his fifth prisoner in seven months. It says Robertson and his lawyer make a difference in opinion.
As “no ethical lawyer will withdraw the appeal that will lead to their client’s execution,” Robertson said he was ready to introduce himself.
Robertson’s lawyer Emily Paavola replied in court documents that Robertson did not take depression medicines, suffered from chronic back pain and skin condition, which made him more depressed and was hampered by those five executions that had missed the narrow population of death from 30 to 25.
Included was Robertson’s best friend at Death Row, Marion Bowman, Jr., killed by a deadly injection on January 31, said Paavola.
Paavloa asked the judge to give up Robertson’s request for four months so that he could have a full psychiatric evaluation to decide if he was mentally competent. Prosecutors suggested that the judge could talk to Robertson himself and decide if he was able to act as his lawyer.
Judge Mary Gordon Baker decided to talk to a different lawyer with Robertson, making sure he understood the consequences and consequences of his decision and a report until early July.
It is not the first time
Already in the early 2000s, Robertson also tried to dismiss all his complaints. He told a judge at a time when he believed he had received the better end of the death sentence, instead of life imprisonment without suspended release and was misled by every lawyer he met after his arrest.
Judge asked Robertson during the 2002 hearing for his friend Michael Pasaro’s decision to volunteer for death of death.
“This did not change my mind. What he did was that it made me understand – an improved reality – a little to see that my best friend goes from one day to play cards with me until the next day without being here,” Robertson said. “He generally took a similar route, which I choose to take now, and we often talked about his decision.”
Death volunteer
Volunteers, as they are called in the circles of the death penalty, exist because the death penalty was restored 50 years ago. About 10% of all executions in the United States are prisoners who agree to die before they finish all their complaints, according to statistics from the death penal information center.
Center and academics studies have found that almost all volunteers have mental illness, which can make them decide that they no longer want to live.
The degree of volunteers has taken a steady decline, along with the number of executions.
From 2000 to 2009, 65 of the 590 executions in the United States were involved in a prisoner who rejected appeals, including Timothy McVey for the murder of 148 people in Oklahoma City bombing. From 2020 until now, only seven out of 111 people killed to death were considered volunteers from the center.
The prosecutor understands that he is not fighting the death sentence
The prosecutor, who sent Robertson to death, said he could understand why prisoners were choosing to stop fighting their sentences.
“If you told me – be deprived of the freedom of death for the rest of your life or just move on and go to the Lord, you know, I could also choose the latter,” said Tommy Pope, now the speaker of the South Carolina House.
But Pope said 26 years ago, he also watches a young man with above average intelligence who loves to work the system when he can and often thinks he is more complained than his lawyers.
“As usual with Jimmy, it will be left to see how he plays until the very end,” Pope said.