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Is this how we treat the mentally ill in Virginia? Execute them?
June 8 execution of mentally ill man strains credulity
Date published: 6/5/2006

CHARLOTTESVILLE--June 8 is fast approaching. It will mark my tenth trip to the Greensville Correctional Center, but I don't go to see friends and help them deal with the trials and tribulations of incarceration. No, I will go there once again to stand outside the prison gates in protest against the state killing that has taken place in Jarratt since the death house was moved there from the old penitentiary on Spring Street in Richmond in 1990. Since 1982 the Commonwealth of Virginia has put 95 men to death.

This time, Virginia is preparing to execute a man whom even state officials declare severely mentally ill and who one state psychiatrist noted appears to be "severely mentally retarded." Percy Levar Walton is one of the few men on death row whom I have met. We spent some time together before his last scheduled execution in 2003. Percy has difficulty communicating, and for most of our half-hour together he repeated single words again and again. I asked, "Why did you choose electrocution as your method of execution?" Percy responded: "Electrocution? Electrocution? Electrocution?" Having worked during college as a psychiatric attendant, I am familiar with this parroting pattern as a sign of schizophrenia.


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Date published: 6/5/2006



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