OLYMPIA – Bill Babbitt held up photos of his decorated Vietnam War veteran brother Wednesday as he asked lawmakers to pass a bill that would allow defendants to avoid the death penalty by showing they were severely mentally impaired.
Babbitt’s brother Manny was executed in California in 1999 for the 1980 murder of 78-year-old Leah Schendel. Babbitt was sentenced to death for breaking into Schendel’s apartment and beating her. She died of a heart attack.
Babbitt said his brother, who received a Purple Heart in prison for wounds suffered at the siege of Khe Sanh, suffered from mental illness and had spent time in a mental hospital.
“I supported the death penalty until 1980 when it came knocking on my door,” Bill Babbitt, who traveled from Elk Grove, Calif., told members of the House Judiciary Committee. “My brother went to Vietnam and came back severely mentally ill, he never would have killed without the war wounds that tormented him.”
The bill would bar the state from executing mentally ill defendants whose appreciation for their acts is “significantly impaired.” Mentally retarded defendants already are barred from execution. Under the measure “severe mental disorder” does not include mental illness or defects attributed to alcohol or drug abuse, or repeated criminal conduct.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Brendan Williams, D-Olympia, said that the bill would make a “necessary change to the law.”
“If someone lacks the full capacity to make the conscious choice to do wrong, I believe that in a just society, they should not be subjected to the retribution of the death penalty.”
Under the measure, the defendant must prove that he does indeed have a severe mental disorder, and if a judge or jury agrees, the defendant must be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of release.
But Tom McBride, executive secretary of the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, said that the definition is too broad, and that if the bill passes as worded, “It’s close to an effective repeal of the death penalty.
“Won’t the average juror say, ‘Of course there’s something wrong with this person because a normal person doesn’t do that?’” he asked. “This is the broadest definition you could pick. It’s going to be wide open.”
The committee also heard testimony on another measure sponsored by Williams that would put a moratorium on executions until July 2008 – though none is expected by then – while a task force studies the application of the death penalty in Washington.
The task force bills in the House and Senate call for a 14-member commission to review the application of the death penalty, including whether race, gender or economic status play roles in who gets it, and whether prosecutors uniformly charge aggravated first-degree murder, the only crime that can carry the death penalty in this state. The proposed commission would also review the costs associated with trials and appeals, and whether the death penalty is applied randomly, as four dissenting state Supreme Court justices have said.
Williams said it’s important for the Legislature to take up the death penalty issue, since the state Supreme Court upheld Washington’s capital punishment law 5-4 last year and invited lawmakers to reconsider the death penalty’s fairness in light of King County prosecutor Norm Maleng’s decision in 2003 to spare the life of the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway. Ridgway pleaded guilty to killing 48 women, and helped authorities find remains, in exchange for life in prison without release.
“There is no other branch of government to whom we can in turn delegate this task to,” Williams said. “The buck stops here.”
The appointment of such a commission was called for by the state bar association’s death penalty subcommittee following an 18-month study that concluded last December.
The subcommittee’s report raised questions about the wisdom of continuing to seek execution, given the exorbitant costs of such trials and the overwhelming likelihood of reversal by appeals courts. The state has spent millions of dollars pursuing death in 79 cases over the last 25 years, with four executions to show for it. Three of the convicts executed had waived their appeals and volunteered to be killed.
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