Execution still on, judge says

Execution still on, judge says

Capital punishment--Florida.

Hoffman, Lisa

The Miami Herald

HIST 298, University of Mary Washington

1984-05-30

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Miami, Florida

Calling the appeal “a gross abuse” of the legal system, a federal judge Tuesday refused to postpone the execution of convicted police killer Alvin Bernard Ford, scheduled to die Thursday in the state’s electric chair.

Meanwhile, a divided Florida Supreme Court blocked the scheduled execution of John O’Callaghan by a 4-3 vote an hour after hearing arguments in the condemned inmate’s mercy appeal. His execution was also scheduled for Thursday.

Attorneys for Ford, anticipating the ruling against their client, filed an appeal to the 11^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal in Atlanta before U.S. District Judge Norman C. Roettger even announced his decision in West Palm Beach.

“Time is at a premium,” said Michal Mello, one of Ford’s three attorneys.

The 31-year-old Ford, who has exhausted more appeals than any other Death Row inmate, will die at 7 a.m. Thursday at Florida State Prison in Starke unless the appeal court or the U.S. Supreme Court finds a reason to delay the execution.

Ford was convicted of shooting to death Fort Lauderdale police officer Dmitri Walter Ilyankoff during a bungled restaurant robbery in 1974.

The Florida Supreme Court upheld his sentence five years later. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court denied his appeal. Gov. Bob Graham signed his first death warrant in 1981.

A month later – and 14 hours before he was to be electrocuted – the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeal granted a postponement. The court dissolved the stay 13 months later.

In April, Graham again signed Ford’s death warrant. The state Supreme court denied a stay May 25.

Roettger used strong words Tuesday to express his irritation with Ford’s latest appeal, which was based on his attorneys’ belief that Ford is now insane.

“This is absolutely a classic pattern of a defendant allegedly having a mental problem and perceiving a rook card in this possession… and holding it in the vest pocket until the last possible minute,” Roettger said.

Richard Burr III, along with Mello, tried to convince the judge that Ford should be examined by psychiatrists and the results presented in court.

In the past two years, Ford has gradually developed severe paranoid delusions, Burr said. He became obsessed that the Ku Klux Klan was keeping his family hostage, and torturing then, in a “pipe alley” near his cell.

He now believes that he is a member of the Klan, that he personally has overturned the death penalty and is staying in prison only because he wants to, Burr said.

Florida law – and the U.S. Constitution, Mello argued – prohibit the execution of an insane person. Burr and Mello contended that Ford’s sanity never has been formally determined in court.

Joy Shearer, an assistant state attorney general, disagreed.

“A determination of sanity has been made, and properly so, by the governor,” she said.

Last December, Graham appointed a panel of three psychiatrists to examine Ford to determine if he understood the death penalty and why he had been sentenced to die.

They found he did. One doctor called Ford’s delusions “contrived and recently learned.”

But Burr and Mello said the decision by the panel of psychiatrists didn’t constitute a true judicial hearing.

Judge Roettger, who also denied an execution stay for Ford in 1981, chastised the attorneys repeatedly for waiting until “the very last, frantic minute” to raise the issue of Ford’s sanity.

“This has got to be a gross abuse of the system,” he said.

After the two-and-a-half-hour hearing, Mello denied that he and Burr had “sandbagged” the case.

“We filed absolutely as soon as possible. If the claim would have been ripe before, we would have filed it then,” he said. O’Callaghan, 38, was under a death warrant for the Aug. 20, 1980 killing of Gerald Vick, a bodyguard for the co-owner of a Hallandale bar where O’Callaghan worked.

The high court’s decision to intervene in O’Callaghan’s case came after a circuit court last Thursday refused to issue a stay of execution.

The Supreme Court gave no explanation for its unsigned, one-sentence opinion. Nor did the justices say whether they will grant O’Callaghan’s request for a new trial.

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Williams, Megan