A report by the Fair Punishment Project claimed that Jones was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, had been physically abused by his father as a child, had been sexually abused by strangers, and had twice attempted suicide before the 1995 killing. Marcel Williams, the report claimed, had been physically and sexually abused as a child, and had been pimped out by his mother to strangers for lodging and food stamps.
Kenneth Williams is also scheduled to be executed by Arkansas on Thursday. He has asked the state Supreme Court to halt his execution based on his claim of intellectual disability. He reportedly has an IQ score of 70, "squarely within the intellectual disability range," according to the Fair Punishment Project.
Other inmates have had their executions halted. After the state's parole board recommended clemency for Jason McGehee, convicted in the 1996 killing of John Melbourne, Jr., his execution was suspended by a federal district court because of a 30-day period for public comment before the board officially made its recommendation to the governor. McGehee's scheduled execution fell within that 30-day period.
Two other inmates, Bruce Ward and Don Davis, saw their executions halted by the state Supreme Court as the U.S. Supreme Court considers another case, McWilliams v. Dunn, involving a prisoner's request for a mental competency evaluation by an expert not selected by the state. The Court held oral arguments in the case on Monday.
Stacey Johnson was granted a stay of execution by the state Supreme Court for a hearing on DNA evidence in his case.
Bishop Anthony Taylor of Little Rock has already spoken out against the scheduled executions. He wrote Governor Asa Hutchinson (R) on March 1 to ask for the eight death sentences to be commuted to life without parole.
"Though guilty of heinous crimes, these men nevertheless retain the God-given dignity of any human life, which must be respected and defended from conception to natural death," Bishop Taylor wrote. "Since the penal system of our state is well equipped to keep them incarcerated for the rest of their life (and thus protect society), we should limit ourselves to non-lethal means."
Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, chair of the U.S. bishops' domestic justice committee, also called for the sentences to be commuted to life imprisonment.
"Indeed, serious criminal activity must be met with appropriate punishment," he wrote. He cited Pope St. John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium Vitae which said that death sentences should not be served for punishment "except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society."
The U.S. has "maximum security prisons" which "can neutralize an incarcerated person's threat to the general public," he added.
The planned executions follow a commutation of a Virginia inmate's death sentence to life without parole by Governor Terry McAuliffe (D), who said that false information had been presented against Ivan Teleguz, 38, during the sentencing for a 2001 murder. The state's bishops had praised the commutation "because we have a profound respect for the sanctity of every human life, from its very beginning until natural death."
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Matt Hadro was the political editor at Catholic News Agency through October 2021. He previously worked as CNA senior D.C. correspondent and as a press secretary for U.S. Congressman Chris Smith.