Drohende Hinrichtung

To retain the death penalty is to retain the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. The cruelty is not confined to the execution chamber. In 1890, the US Supreme Court recognized the "horrible" uncertainty a death row prisoner had to endure while waiting for execution. In that ruling, noted a Justice in a 2015, the Court was "describing a delay of a mere four weeks" between conviction and execution, whereas today "we must describe delays measured, not in weeks, but in decades". Doyle Hamm has been kept in this condemned state for 30 years – more than 11,000 days and nights of "horrible" uncertainty. His lawyer says that despite his situation, Doyle Hamm has achieved "remarkable progress and success in his rehabilitation."

In her 6 February 2018 ruling staying the execution, the Chief Judge of the US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, Karon O. Bowdre, wrote that "no one disputes" either that Doyle Hamm has "a long and complicated medical history" or that his history of intravenous drug use "complicates the accessibility of his peripheral veins". She found that "a genuine dispute of material fact exists about whether Mr Hamm has adequate peripheral venous access to allow [the state] to execute him without resorting to a central line. And a genuine dispute of material fact exists about whether Mr Hamm has lymphadenopathy [enlarged lymph nodes] in areas of his body that would make a central line placement extremely dangerous… If his medical condition is as he alleges, then his execution would be unnecessarily painful and dangerous".

Doyle Hamm’s current lawyer has represented him for the past 28 years. In the clemency petition just filed with the governor, he states "Doyle Hamm currently faces two death sentences: one, at the hands of the State of Alabama; the other, very soon, at the hands of his cancer." He describes his client as "extremely frail" and in "significant pain" for which he has been taking "heavy-duty pain medication". He is "already near his deathbed and to seek to execute him "is simply a ghoulish pursuit".

Twenty-seven years ago, in 1991, Doyle Hamm’s lawyer filed a post-conviction appeal under "Rule 32" of the Alabama Rules of Criminal Procedure. After a hearing in 1999, the trial court denied relief. The judge’s order was a verbatim adoption of the "Proposed Memorandum Opinion" that the state filed with the court one working day earlier. During oral argument in the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in 2014, one of the three judges said to counsel for the state: "it’s a bit odd, is it not, that the Alabama Rule 32 judge takes the State’s proposed findings and conclusions, 89 pages worth, and files them as the judge’s own within a day of receiving them, without even taking the time to take out the word 'proposed’? That doesn’t engender much confidence in the Alabama State Court system, right? ... I’m telling you: I don’t believe for a second that the judge went through 89 pages in a day and then filed it as his own. As if he had gone through everything, went through his notes, the transcript, the exhibits, and the like. It just can’t be done! It just can’t be done." The 11th Circuit judge then noted the level of deference that federal judges are required to give state court decisions under the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, adding "I’m telling you, that it sticks in my craw." The three-judge panel upheld the death sentence in 2015, in which it "strongly criticize[d] the practice of trial courts’ uncritical wholesale adoption of the proposed orders or opinions submitted by a prevailing party". This "strong" criticism was nevertheless an empty condemnation – reduced to a footnote, with the panel stressing that the trial judge’s "procedural shortcut has no bearing on our disposition of Hamm’s federal habeas appeal". On the question of the trial lawyer’s performance at the 1987 sentencing, the panel acknowledged the "horribly abusive environment in which Hamm was raised" but decided the jury had been given enough information, despite the brevity of the mitigation presentation.

Alabama accounts for 61 of the 1,468 executions in the USA since the Supreme Court approved new capital laws in 1976. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty unconditionally, regardless of the crime or the execution method chosen.