News / Human Rights

Missouri executes brain-damaged inmate

Wednesday, 18 March 2015 1:21 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 18 March 2015 1:22 PM ]

Cecil Clayton was given a lethal injection Tuesday night.

The United States has executed a death-row inmate, who had lost parts of his brain in an accident over four decades ago.

Cecil Clayton, 74, was given a lethal injection Tuesday night for the 1996 shooting death of a sheriff's deputy in rural southwest Missouri's Barry County.

According to his attorneys, Clayton, who was suffering from a worsening dementia, had brain damage from a 1972 sawmill accident.

He suffered from lingering effects of the accident in which a piece of wood broke off and pierced Clayton's head.

“Mr. Clayton was not a ‘criminal’ before the sawmill accident that lodged part of his skull into his brain and required 20 percent of his frontal lobe to be removed. He was happily married, raising a family and working hard at his logging business,” said his attorney, Elizabeth Unger Carlyle.

Doctors removed eight percent of his brain; one-fifth of the frontal lobe that governs impulse control, judgment, problem solving, spontaneity and memory.

His attorneys appealed the case to the US Supreme Court and asked the Missouri governor for clemency.

They argued that Clayton with an IQ of just 71 does not understand the significance of his scheduled execution or the reasons for it.

They said in their appeal, the lethal injection would likely cause the inmate "excruciating or tortuous pain and needless suffering."

Missouri governor and a divided Supreme Court, however, denied the last ditch effort Tuesday evening.

“Cecil Clayton had – literally – a hole in his head. Executing him without a hearing to determine his competency violated the constitution, Missouri law and basic human dignity,” said Carlyle.

“The world will not be a safer place because Mr. Clayton has been executed,” she said.

SB/AGB

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