Mentally Ill Killer Gains Clemency

In a rare decision, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday commuted the death sentence of a delusional killer and ordered him to serve life without parole.

The five-member board spared the life of Alexander Williams IV just hours before a stay of execution it had granted last week was set to expire.

This is the first time that the Georgia board has granted clemency to a condemned murderer when his mental health was at issue and only the third time in the nation over the last 25 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Since 1977, the start of the modern death penalty era in the United States, 760 individuals have been executed and 48 have had death sentences commuted to life.

The Georgia board acted after hearing from three psychiatrists who examined Williams for about three hours on Thursday at the state prison in Jackson.

Williams had been on death row for nearly 16 years. His case had drawn international attention because of his mental illness and the fact that he committed murder at the age of 17.

Most nations ban executions of individuals for crimes committed as juveniles. The American Bar Assn., the European Union, Amnesty International, the National Mental Health Assn. and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter are among those who urged mercy for Williams.

In 1986, the Supreme Court barred the execution of murderers who have become so insane that they do not know they are about to be killed, nor the reason for it. But the high court has never ruled on the issue of whether it is permissible to execute an inmate who is medicated to achieve a minimum level of sanity. Williams, who has been diagnosed as a “chronic paranoid schizophrenic,” has been forcibly medicated at times in recent years.

The pardons board, which has the exclusive power to grant clemency in Georgia, did not disclose its vote Monday, nor did it provide any details on what led to the decision.

However, the board expressed its “deepest sympathy for the family of [murder victim] Aleta Bunch and especially her mother Carolyn Bunch,” who has strongly supported an execution for Williams.

Now 33, Williams robbed, raped and murdered Bunch, a 16-year-old high school student, after kidnapping her at an Augusta, Ga., mall, where the girl had gone to buy her mother a birthday present.

“The pain and devastation that Williams caused this family can never be erased,” said pardons board chairman Walter Ray. “By making sure that Williams will remain in an 8-by-10 [foot] prison cell for the rest of his life with absolutely no hope for parole, we hope that the certainty of our decision will give Mrs. Bunch the closure she so deserves,” Ray added.

The victim’s mother said she was disappointed. “I don’t think the pardon board had any feelings about my daughter’s life,” Carolyn Bunch said from her South Carolina home.

“She had just turned 16,” Bunch said. “She worked two part-time jobs and went to school full time. I just don’t think they were looking at what we have gone through for 16 years. She was a beautiful young person. There wasn’t anybody who met her who didn’t love her. That is my one consolation.”

Numerous reports over the last dozen years by prison doctors and psychologists have described Williams as severely mentally ill and “out of touch with reality,” and said that he believed actress Sigourney Weaver is God. As recently as late January, a prison doctor described him as “delusional.”

Williams’ lead lawyer, Mark A. Olive, praised the board’s action. “We sincerely thank the board for this merciful decision. We also thank the thousands of people locally, nationally and internationally who chose to speak now for abused and mentally infirm children,” he said.

William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, also applauded the decision, saying that the life sentence “balances accountability with justice.”

Stephen B. Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, said that in addition to the killer’s mental condition and age at the time of the crime, he thought the board was swayed by poor representation provided Williams by court-appointed trial lawyer O.L. Collins. Collins was later removed from the list of lawyers eligible to represent defendants in death penalty cases in Richmond County, Ga.

As a youth, Williams was frequently beaten by his mother and grandmother and sexually assaulted by his stepfather, according to court documents. But Collins did not tell the jury anything about Williams’ childhood during the penalty phase of the trial. Five jurors who sentenced Williams to death submitted affidavits to the pardons board saying they would have voted for a life term if they had known his history.

“The board’s action is a step forward,” Bright said. “I think it is part of an emerging consensus that execution of the mentally ill is every bit as objectionable as executing the mentally retarded.”

Georgia banned execution of the mentally retarded after the controversial execution of Jerome Bowden, who was examined by a board-hired psychiatrist in 1986 to see how well he understood his pending electrocution.

Georgia was one of the first two states in the nation to bar execution of the mentally retarded. Fifteen of the 38 states with capital punishment laws prohibit execution of the mentally retarded.

Last week, the Supreme Court, in a Virginia case, heard arguments on whether executions of the mentally retarded violate the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. A ruling is expected by the end of June.