Press release from 24 June 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 24, 2004
Contact: Dana Hansen Chavis, Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, Inc.
865-637-7979 for further details
Federal Appeals Court Grants Relief To Death Row Inmate
Gregory Thompson, who was facing an August 19, 2004, execution date, was granted relief late yesterday by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
The appeals court found Thompson’s trial counsel “failed to render effective assistance of counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment by failing to conduct a reasonable investigation of Thompson’s social history and present powerful, readily available mitigating evidence, and by failing to pursue known leads that might have helped them to prepare their case in mitigation.” The case is remanded to the district court in Chattanooga for further proceedings.
In its opinion, the appeals court said evidence of Thompson’s mental illness at the time of his 1985 trial “was not subtle” and should have been reported by Thompson’s lawyers to experts “for psychiatric evaluation.” The court said “had trial counsel adequately interviewed family members, counsel would have found that Thompson exhibited troubling behaviors from an early age.” The court pointed to “powerful mitigating evidence” that was not presented to Thompson’s jury because trial counsel failed to “obtain and present a comprehensive social history” which showed, among other things, that Thompson “was the victim of verbal abuse and neglect,” “he observed his father brutally beat and rape his mother,” and “his mother died when he was five years old and he was left with his maternal grandmother who was continuously drunk for the first six weeks and did not even provide food for the children.”
The court found Thompson “had the kind of troubled history we have declared relevant to assessing a defendant’s moral culpability” and “had the jury been able to place [Thompson’s] excruciating life history on the mitigating side of the scale, there is a reasonable probability that at least one juror would have struck a different balance” and voted for a life sentence instead of death.
In January 2004, the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected Thompson’s plea that an execution date not be set because his death sentence was the unjust result of ineffective assistance of trial counsel and also because of his severe mental illness. In May, the Tennessee Supreme Court also denied Thompson a hearing on his competency to be executed.
“We are thankful that the federal court granted relief,” said Chavis.
Thompson, 42, has been on Tennessee’s death row since 1985 where prison doctors have been treating his mental illness with powerful anti-psychotic drugs. Thompson’s lawyers have argued since 1990 that ineffective assistance of counsel at his trial resulted in an unjust sentence of death. In 2003, Judge Clay of the Sixth Circuit appeals court agreed finding Thompson’s trial counsel deprived him “of the ability to mount any defense in the guilt phase and to present important mitigating evidence about his mental condition at the penalty phase. In so doing, trial counsel left their client virtually defenseless.”
“The court’s decision of yesterday corrects a grave injustice”, said Chavis.
Supporters
International Justice Project
National Mental Health Association
Tennessee Black Caucus
Click here to sign the Electronic Petition for Clemency