As Greene approaches a Nov. 9 execution date, his lawyers are raising questions about who should determine his mental competency. Arkansas gives considerable weight to its prison director’s opinion in deciding whether a condemned inmate has the mental capacity to understand his execution; Greene’s lawyers want doctors to have a greater say.
“The system is really quite antiquated,” John Williams, an attorney for Greene, said in an interview. “(Prison director) Wendy Kelley is an arm of the state. She doesn’t have the expertise to make that determination.”
Greene was convicted for the 1991 killing Sidney Jethro Burnett after Burnett and his wife accused Greene of arson. At least one court this week will take up Greene’s case.
The inmate hasn’t always made it easy for his attorneys. While pleading for clemency, he told the Arkansas Parole Board this month that his lawyers are wrong to call him “delusional” and that courts have routinely found him competent. He also told the board, “I knew what I was doing to him,” when he tortured Burnett for an hour before shooting him. When a doctor testified that Greene has done headstands during examinations and even in courtrooms, Greene told the panel that he does yoga to remain “functional.”
Williams says the seemingly lucid moments mask severe mental illness.
“A lot of people who are mentally ill don’t think they’re mentally ill,” the lawyer said.
The case has drawn the attention of both the American Bar Association and a collection of 28 mental health professionals, who wrote to Gov. Asa Hutchinson saying it would be “morally and ethically wrong” to execute Greene.
“Mr. Greene’s illness manifests itself in extreme physical contortions, in self-mutilation, and in delusional beliefs he holds about a conspiracy against him between his attorneys and prison officials,” the mental health professionals wrote.