State Supreme Court sets execution date for Thompson
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Supreme Court set an Aug. 19 execution date for a Tennessee inmate convicted of stabbing a Shelbyville woman to death in 1985.
The order filed late Wednesday also requires that the Circuit Court of Coffee County, where Gregory Thompson, 42, was originally tried and sentenced, to review whether the inmate is mentally competent to be executed.
“The only issue that remains in the trial court in Coffee County is his competence to be executed,” District Attorney Mickey Layne said Thursday. “Does he understand that he’s been sentenced to death, does he understand why he’s been sentenced to death … it’s a low threshold situation.”
Public Defender Dana Hansen Chavis, who has represented Thompson since 1998, said the high court moved faster than necessary.
“It is disappointing, especially when the evidence is uncontroverted that Mr. Thompson suffers from a severe and debilitating mental illness,” Chavis said. “The Constitution says we should not and cannot execute people who are insane.”
Last year, a federal appeals court rejected Thompson’s claims that his mental illness and social history should have been a more prominent part of his defense during the trial and sentencing phase and said Thompson hasn’t offered any proof he suffered from mental illness when the crime was committed.
The state Supreme Court appointed Michael J. Passino as lead counsel representing Thompson in competency proceedings and state Supreme Court proceedings leading up to Thompson’s execution.
Thompson was convicted Aug. 22, 1985, of abducting Brenda Blanton Lane from a Wal-Mart parking lot in Shelbyville, driving her to a rural area in Coffee County and stabbing her four times with a rusty butcher knife.
“It’s going on 20 years, this has been an extremely long time since January 1985. All the close relatives of the victim have died, obviously it’s a process that has taken much too long, but it likely will come to a final resolution this year,” said Layne, who was an assistant district attorney at the time of the trial.
Lane, 28, a former Shelbyville newspaper reporter, was working in public relations for the United Methodist Publishing House in Nashville at the time of her death.
State-paid psychiatrists say Thompson has bipolar disorder, which causes severe mood swings and delusions and is given anti-psychotic drugs.
“What these drugs do is mask his underlying symptoms, so in effect, they act as a chemical veil to his true mental state,” Chavis said.
Thompson’s delusions have led him to believe at times that prison guards are aliens from outer space and that his cell is contaminated by radiation, court documents show.
The state hasn’t executed anyone since Robert Glen Coe in 2000. Since then, three other inmates have come within hours of execution in Tennessee before receiving stays.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.