Murderer's execution delayed

by Erin McClam
The Associated Press

ATLANTA – The Georgia parole board issued a stay of execution yesterday for a killer who is said to be so delusional when he is off his medication that he believes actress Sigourney Weaver is God.

Advocates for the mentally ill have protested the impending execution of Alexander Williams, 33, who had been scheduled to die by injection tonight. An appeal lodged with the U.S. Supreme Court claims Williams forcibly was medicated to make him sane enough for execution.

The parole board issued the stay until midnight Feb. 25, saying they wanted more time to review the case.

Williams' supporters, who include mental health advocates, religious leaders and former first lady Rosalynn Carter, have sent letters to the parole board during the years.

His attorneys argued in their Supreme Court appeal he should not be executed because he is mentally ill and because he is forcibly given powerful anti-psychotic drugs to make him "synthetically sane" and competent for execution.

The Supreme Court has not ruled on the question of medicating prisoners to make them competent for execution.

Williams' appeal asks the high court to follow the precedent of the Louisiana Supreme Court, which said it is unconstitutional to forcibly medicate prisoners to prepare them for execution.

State authorities said federal privacy law prohibits them from discussing specifics of Williams' medication. But a prison official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Williams had to be forced to take his drugs only twice in the 16 years since he was convicted.

Otherwise he has taken his daily medication voluntarily, the official said.

The high court already was scheduled to hear arguments today on whether it is constitutional to execute the retarded. Georgia law bars the execution of people deemed mentally retarded.

Williams was 17 in 1986 when he raped and murdered 16-year-old Aleta Bunch, who was kidnapped from an Augusta mall where she had gone to buy her mother a birthday gift.

Williams' attorneys say his paranoid schizophrenia was in its early stages when he committed the crime. Now, they say, the psychosis is so severe that he believes Weaver is God and speaks to him.

"It is frankly wrong to execute someone who is as sick as Mr. Williams is," said Ron Honberg, legal director for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

The victim's mother, Carolyn Bunch, said yesterday she believes Williams is mostly faking mental illness.

"I don't think he deserves to live anymore," she said. "When he took Aleta, he was not ill. He knew exactly what he was doing."

Williams was set to be put to death in 2000, but the state Supreme Court halted the execution while it studied whether the electric chair was constitutional. Georgia later shifted all executions to injection.