# Calif. inmate says he's too old, ill to die



## Nachtwächter (Dec 9, 2005)

* Calif. inmate says he's too old, ill to die *

By John Ritter, USA TODAY_Tue Jan 10, 6:46 AM ET_

Less than a month after the uproar over gang leader Stanley "Tookie" Williams' clemency bid and execution, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has another mercy plea on his desk.

Though both involve multiple killers, Clarence Allen's case bears little resemblance to Williams'.

Allen, scheduled to die next Tuesday by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison, makes no claim of redemption through good works, as Crips gang co-founder Williams did. Allen has no stable of celebrity supporters or Nobel Peace Prize nominations on his resume, no plaudits for a crusade to steer children away from gang violence, as Williams did.

Allen's argument is more basic: He says he's too old and too sick to be put to death. More than two decades on death row, marked by what his clemency petition calls San Quentin's "chronically deficient health care system," is punishment enough, he says.

The 75-year-old Allen, involved in the murders of four people, is diabetic, legally blind and confined to a wheelchair outside his cell. He has had two heart attacks and a stroke and is too weak to grant interviews, one of his lawyers says.

"He's been reduced to an incapacitated old man, near death already," says Michael Satris, Allen's chief appeals lawyer. "To put him to death on top of that is beyond the borders of civilized behavior."

Allen's clemency petition also claims that he didn't get a fair trial in 1982 because testimony from witnesses with criminal records was unreliable. State and federal appeals courts have rejected those arguments.

Allen would be the second-oldest inmate executed since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted its capital punishment ban in 1976, according to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The oldest was John Nixon, who was 77 when he died by lethal injection on Dec. 14 for a 1985 Mississippi murder.

The Supreme Court has restricted applying the death penalty if condemned inmates are mentally ill at the time of execution or were under 18 when they committed their crimes. Under a 1986 ruling, for example, if an elderly death row inmate were incapacitated because of Alzheimer's disease, execution would violate the Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. But the justices have made no such stipulation regarding old age.

"It's totally related to mental status," says Elisabeth Semel, director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California-Berkeley law school. "Age alone hasn't been raised as a legal issue."

The Supreme Court has found capital punishment acceptable under the Eighth Amendment on two grounds: retribution or deterrence. Allen's lawyers argue that neither purpose would be served because he's so ill - physically and mentally. "He's been fully punished and deterred by the 23 years he's spent on death row facing execution," Satris says.

A former San Quentin warden, Daniel Vasquez, says Allen poses no threat. "He has tended toward passive acceptance and reconciliation rather than active rebellion and conflict," Vasquez says in the petition.

When James Hubbard faced execution in Alabama, his lawyers raised some of the same issues now before Schwarzenegger. Hubbard was 74 and had cancer and emphysema. He had been on death row 27 years, and in August 2004 became the oldest inmate put to death in the USA since 1941.

Because of the slow pace of capital punishment appeals, death row inmates in many states are more likely to die from illness or suicide than execution.

Only 12 killers have been executed since California reinstated the death penalty in 1977, but 48 others died before appeals ran their course. Thirty-one died from what the state Department of Corrections calls "natural causes." Suicide claimed 12, and "other" causes such as drug overdoses claimed five.

Allen's is the fourth clemency petition before Schwarzenegger since he took office in November 2003. He had denied three, including the one from Williams in December. "I don't think Schwarzenegger has created reason for optimism" in Allen's case, Semel says. "On the other hand, it's not over until it's over."

Allen was convicted in the 1974 murder of a 17-year-old robbery accomplice who had snitched on him. While in prison, he ordered the murders of three witnesses who had testified against him. He was sentenced to death in 1982 for those killings.

"The fact that Allen has been able to live his life after depriving so many innocent people of theirs is no reason to show him mercy," says the state attorney general's petition opposing clemency.

The California Supreme Court is also weighing Allen's claim that execution would be cruel. A ruling could come this week. Schwarzenegger announced last week that he would decide clemency without holding a private hearing in Sacramento, as he did in Williams' case.

Allen's petition says that at different times, San Quentin denied him his medication for heart disease and diabetes. "The kindest slant you can put on it was it was your typical bureaucratic inadvertence," Satris says. "But who knows." Several calls to San Quentin seeking response to Allen's claims weren't returned.

The quality of health care in California's 165,000-inmate prison system is under federal court scrutiny. Last month, a judge ordered Schwarzenegger to take immediate steps to resolve problems that result in the death of an average of one inmate a month.

Allen's execution would be the third in California in less than a year. That pace could accelerate in the state with the nation's biggest death row population - about 650 - even while a blue-ribbon panel studies the fairness of the death penalty and a state Assemblybill calls for a moratorium. A 2001 Field Poll found that 73% of Californians favor a moratorium, even though about two-thirds support the death penalty.

Four other killers could be executed this year, according to the state attorney general's office.


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## KozmoKramer (Apr 25, 2004)

Well, its not like it's without precedent.
I remember when Jim "Stretch" McGillicuddy was on death row and claimed to be "too tall" to die, Raul "The Gardener" Jimenez claimed all the azaleas will die if he is executed. Morty "the heinous haberdasher" Goldman claimed that if he was executed; "so who vill stitch? OK, so you vonna kill me? so kill me already."
A capitol offense punishable by death shouldn’t necessarily mean the individual be executed should it??


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## popo (Apr 1, 2005)

Do him a favor and give him the shot.


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## mpd61 (Aug 7, 2002)

too old and/or ill to die?

Fine, just preserve him in formaldehyde and he'll be immortal
:rock: 
Lunacy, sheer lunacy!8O


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## GateKeeper (Jan 10, 2005)

He probably cost the tax paying citizens of California hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical care already! I think the citizens and victims families should at least have the benefit of seeing the end result. He was sentenced to death, not life in prison. Stop appealing it and it will come quicker.


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