Greene stood throughout his Oct. 4 appearance before the Parole Board, fidgeting and fumbling through documents that, he says, promised him a transfer to his home state North Carolina, where authorities say he killed a brother days before killing Burnett. Bloodied, rolled up strands of tissue stuck out of both ears and his left nostril; his lawyers say that is a symptom of Greene’s mental illness.
“If I could go back to North Carolina and get medical treatment, that would be great, but if not, let’s come on with this execution,” he told the panel.
Williams says Greene believes he’s being executed because he uncovered a purported (and to Greene, successful) conspiracy among guards and lawyers to torture the inmate and dissolve his central nervous system and spinal column.
“He thinks that the Department of Correction cannot send him back to North Carolina because he knows too much about what has happened to him in prison,” Williams said. “They won’t send him back to North Carolina, so they have to execute him.”
Baloney, state lawyers say. North Carolina sent Greene to Arkansas for his murder trial on the condition that he would be returned if he received any sentence other than the death penalty. Greene knows a transfer is a lifeline, Assistant Attorney General Kathryn Henry said.
The governor said Friday that he was still reviewing Greene’s file after Parole Board members recommended that he not spare the inmate’s life.
Greene’s execution would be Arkansas’ first since it put four men to death in an eight-day period in April.
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