PARCHMAN – Lawyers for a Death Row inmate, who was issued a stay of execution just four hours before he was to die by lethal injection, have until today to file supplemental briefs with the court of appeals. Robert Simon, 47, was scheduled to die on May 24 for the gruesome murders of a Quitman County family of four after they came home from church in July 1990.
Simon’s attorneys filed for a stay of execution on May 23, which Judge Grady Jolly, of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, said a three-judge panel granted on May 24.
Jolly said the stay was granted because medical records and sworn affidavits of Simon’s lawyers and a clinical neuropsychologist raised questions as to Simon’s mental capacity after he fell in prison in January 2011.
Simon’s lawyers argued this made Simon unable to understand what was going on and Mississippi law says Simon has to understand why he’s being executed.
Judge Jolly’s Order said: “The Supreme Court has further made clear…that such an inmate who makes a showing (obviously through his lawyers) that he is not competent to be executed may be entitled to a hearing to decide whether his execution must be stayed until he is competent.”
Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) officials said Simon fell out of his bunk in January and hit his head. Simon’s lawyers said they began to notice shortly thereafter that Simon had trouble remembering things.
Mississippi’s Attorney General Jim Hood said the issue of Simon’s mental health had been “exhausted” in appeals rejected by both Mississippi and federal courts, and that Simon’s latest ploy to escape execution would open the floodgates for other such claims.
“We’re going to see a rash of knot heads at Parchman,” Hood told The Associated Press. “We’ll have to put cameras into every cell on death row because they are all going to claim they fell and bumped their head.”
Hood said that two doctors at the state penitentiary in Parchman interviewed Simon and found no reason to halt his execution.
The New Orleans Court of Appeals said: “The determination of whether [Simon] is competent to be executed cannot be made solely on the basis of examinations performed by State-appointed psychiatrists.”
The Order further said: “These medical records and affidavits, made under oath, raise substantial questions as to whether Simon had a neurological injury in January 2011 at the prison, which injury has so affected him, either temporarily or permanently, that he neither understands that he committed a crime nor that he is about to be executed. Although this evidence has been presented, this panel has no basis to consider whether his claim has any merit, whether it is believable or unbelievable. Because there is no time for such a hearing before the date and time of execution, a temporary stay of his execution is necessary in order to answer these questions.”
Attorney General Hood told The Associated Press that it appeared the 5th Circuit was given more information than it could digest in a short time, and that is partly the fault of defense attorneys who waited until the last minute to file Simon’s petition.
“We have seen this stuff time and time again, and the judges – they hesitate because of a little mud in the water,” Hood said.
Hood said he expects the 5th Circuit will send Simon’s case back to federal court for a hearing or with an order for a mental evaluation of Simon. He said that would mean extra costs to the state to hire its own experts plus pay for Simon’s.
“It’s going to mean a lot of expense to the state to make sure all our consciences are clear,” Hood said.
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