S.C. Death Row Inmate Loses Appeal

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court refused Monday to consider an appeal from South Carolina death row inmate Jamie Wilson, convicted of killing two third-graders during a shooting spree at an elementary school in 1988.

Mental health groups had urged the Supreme Court to use Wilson's case to decide if it is unconstitutional for states to execute people who were seriously mentally ill when they committed their crimes. The high court has already decided that mentally retarded inmates may not be put to death.

Wilson pleaded guilty -- but mentally ill -- to killing two 8-year-old girls. He had been released from a hospital psychiatric unit about five months before the shootings, because his father's insurance no longer covered the bills. The then-19-year-old Wilson walked inside the lunchroom and shot at students and adults with a handgun, then fired more shots in a classroom. Seven other students and two teachers were injured.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-scotus-death-penalty,0,584685,print.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[Rose Siding]

1. kick for health care reform

[Trillo]

2. Very little sympathy here for a child killer.

However, I find Bush's recent executive order 13263 about forcing mental health care onto all "consumers," creation of vast databases cataloging ALL individual's mental disorders, to be disconcerting when I think about connecting the dots to this type of case. Maybe Bush's database is going to ultimately be used to kill all those who are mentally ill when there are additional "legal transgressions" and documentation to prove the illness.

Of course, there is nothing about paying for mental health care in his proposal except for the reference to consumers (who presumably are forced to pay for forced treatment?), just more Big Brother cataloging of all citizens.

[Mnemosyne]

3. The prisons have become warehouses for the mentally ill.

Most receive little to no care for their illnesses and are targeted by others, including guards, for reprehensible treatment.

Mental illness is a physiological disease, which the person has no more control over than someone with MS, et al. Because it affects the mind, should there be no compassion for those people?

I don't want seriously mentally ill walking the streets that are capable of killing, but do not believe they deserve to die. They deserve medical care. I don't care who they have killed, they are very sick people.

[gatlingforme]

4. Very well put, the biggest proponents of putting mentally ill

people on death row is TEXAS-when Bush was Gov. I really think he got his jollies from death row convictions. THis is very sad and there are over 80% of the people here in IL in jail that have Mental Illness, drug addiction, and so fourth. VERY SAD

[Mnemosyne]

5. hey gat! did you also know...

shrub only commuted 1 death sentence as governor?
Henry Lee Lukas, pedophile and child killer.

I personally abhor the death penalty, but believe it says even more of *'s character.

[gatlingforme]

6. You have that right!!!! Bushes character is maligned.