The first time I shook the hand of a Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor, I thought it was a big deal. This was before I learned that any politi­cian would shake your hand, and do most any­thing else you want­ed, for the right price, as this sto­ry illustrates.

The hand­shake occurred in 1979. I was a junior lawyer in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., work­ing with Rod Hills, a for­mer senior advis­er to Pres­i­dent Ford and Chair­man of the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion.  A Sen­ate com­mit­tee held hear­ings on amend­ments to the Employ­ee Retire­ment Income Secu­ri­ty Act (“ERISA”), which gov­erns employ­ee ben­e­fit plans. The com­mit­tee asked Rod to tes­ti­fy. He assigned me to write his testimony.

I was not hap­py about this. ERISA is extreme­ly com­pli­cat­ed. Even U.S. Supreme Court jus­tices seem to strug­gle with it, call­ing it a “retic­u­lat­ed statute,” mean­ing criss­crossed, inter­twined, and con­vo­lut­ed. I was capa­ble of under­stand­ing only small parts of it for brief moments, and when I tilt­ed my head to one side, those few insights would slide out of my ear.

Work­ing under a tight dead­line, I crawled through ERISA’s dense thick­et of “retic­u­lat­ed” sub­sec­tions, draft­ed a lengthy state­ment that made no sense but had a lot of big words in it, and hand­ed it off to Rod, con­vinced he would cut it to shreds and ques­tion the wis­dom of my con­tin­ued employment.

To my sur­prise, he sent it to the Sen­ate com­mit­tee with a cou­ple of minor changes. I assumed he didn’t have the time to read it care­ful­ly. For days, I lived in fear the com­mit­tee would call to tell him some­one forged his sig­na­ture to an utter­ly stu­pid state­ment. As time passed and the com­mit­tee didn’t rat me out, I learned my draft prob­a­bly died under a bliz­zard of writ­ten sub­mis­sions. Forty wit­ness­es filed such state­ments, and over a hun­dred inter­est­ed par­ties post­ed lengthy com­ments. As we’ve recent­ly learned, mem­bers of Con­gress don’t even read the statutes they enact, so it’s hard to imag­ine they pay much atten­tion to the moun­tain of back­ground mate­r­i­al sub­mit­ted by the pub­lic. In this case, I’m great­ly thank­ful for their negligence.

On the day of Rod’s tes­ti­mo­ny, he and I entered a cav­ernous room and sat at a table look­ing up at a row of high-backed chairs stretch­ing across an ele­vat­ed dais. All the chairs were emp­ty except the one in the mid­dle. Of the committee’s fif­teen sen­a­tors, Har­ri­son “Pete” Williams was the lone ranger that day, and he only showed up because he chaired the com­mit­tee and had to run the hear­ing. Serv­ing his fourth term, Williams was known as New Jer­sey’s “sen­a­tor for life” because of his enor­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty, and he was pow­er­ful, hav­ing led the charge to enact reams of social wel­fare laws, includ­ing ERISA.

He intro­duced Rod in glow­ing terms. Rod spoke elo­quent­ly and answered ques­tions. I didn’t under­stand any­thing he said, but Sen­a­tor Williams seemed pleased.

After­wards, the sen­a­tor joined us on the floor of the hear­ing room, and Rod intro­duced me to him, where­upon the big hand­shake took place.

I was young, green, and not the senator’s con­stituent. He had every rea­son to ignore me, but he asked about my fam­i­ly, my move from Cal­i­for­nia, and my impres­sions of Wash­ing­ton, and he seemed gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in my answers. When we left the hear­ing room, I liked him and felt priv­i­leged to have met him.

My warm feel­ings didn’t last long. I was read­ing the news­pa­per one night with the tele­vi­sion on in the back­ground when I heard Sen­a­tor Williams’ name men­tioned. I looked up to see a live cam­era film­ing gov­ern­ment agents stand­ing at the door of his house. A few min­utes lat­er, an NBC reporter stuck a micro­phone under his chin. Smil­ing ner­vous­ly, Williams said he’d been served with an indict­ment, but he didn’t know what it was about.

This is what it was about. In 1978, the FBI set up a sting oper­a­tion code-named ABSCAM, using Melvin Wein­berg, a con­vict­ed con artist, to run it. Wein­berg cre­at­ed a fake com­pa­ny called Abdul Enter­pris­es and super­vised a cast of FBI agents, who posed as Arab sheikhs seek­ing to invest mil­lions of dol­lars in the Unit­ed States. They offered bribes to politi­cians to secure gov­ern­ment advan­tages for the pho­ny company.

The sting was wild­ly suc­cess­ful. A big crowd of politi­cians fell for it, includ­ing six mem­bers of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, three Philadel­phia City Coun­cil­men, the May­or of Cam­den, New Jer­sey, and one U.S. Sen­a­tor, my hand­shake bud­dy, Pete Williams.

A few weeks after I shook his hand, he shook the hand of Richard Farhart in the Plaza Hotel in New York. Farhart was an FBI agent out of the Cleve­land office. Of Lebanese descent, he wore a sheikh’s tra­di­tion­al head­dress and flow­ing robes and feigned a Mid­dle East­ern accent. “I would like to give you some mon­ey,” he told Williams. The sen­a­tor was hor­ri­fied, imme­di­ate­ly exclaim­ing, “No, no, no, no, no!”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the bribe itself didn’t hor­ri­fy him. It was the form of pay­ment, which he con­sid­ered too easy to trace. In sub­se­quent meet­ings with the ersatz sheikh, Williams nego­ti­at­ed a com­plex deal with Abdul Enter­pris­es, where­by the com­pa­ny would issue 18% of the shares of a tita­ni­um min­ing enter­prise to Williams’ lawyer with the under­stand­ing that the lawyer would deliv­er the own­er­ship inter­est to the sen­a­tor. In exchange, Williams promised to use his posi­tion to steer gov­ern­ment con­tracts to the venture.

Williams vehe­ment­ly denied all of this. “I know I broke no laws.… time, his­to­ry, and almighty God will vin­di­cate me,” he thun­dered, but when it came out that the FBI tape-record­ed his meet­ings with the sheikh, noth­ing short of almighty God’s divine inter­ven­tion could have saved him. At his tri­al in 1981, his lawyers were reduced to argu­ing he hadn’t real­ly tak­en a bribe because the tita­ni­um min­ing com­pa­ny was fake and its stock had no val­ue. When that failed, they com­plained that the Attor­ney Gen­er­al tar­get­ed him for pros­e­cu­tion sole­ly because he sup­port­ed Ted Kennedy for pres­i­dent over Jim­my Carter. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the jury came back in record time with guilty ver­dicts on nine counts of bribery and conspiracy.

Williams remained free on bail while he appealed the con­vic­tion. Mean­while, the Sen­ate Ethics Com­mit­tee asked him to resign. He refused. The com­mit­tee moved to expel him, and he demand­ed a full hear­ing on the Sen­ate floor. The com­mit­tee played the damn­ing tapes. Sen­a­tor Inouye, who act­ed as his coun­sel, didn’t ask the sen­a­tors to dis­be­lieve their lying eyes. Instead, he railed against the FBI. “The Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment had no busi­ness test­ing the weak­ness of Unit­ed States sen­a­tors,” he said, and he warned the sen­a­tors to be wary of inves­ti­ga­tions into their own activ­i­ties. Inouye’s trans­par­ent “vote-for-Pete-because-next-time-it-could-be-you” defense didn’t work. Know­ing the tal­ly was against him, Williams resigned just before the roll call vote.

He lost the appeal of his con­vic­tion in 1983, served two years in a fed­er­al pen­i­ten­tiary, and a third in a halfway house. His request for a par­don from Pres­i­dent Clin­ton failed. Despite the FBI’s tapes, he main­tained his inno­cence until he died of heart dis­ease in 2001 at the age of 81.

Had he not resigned, Sen­a­tor Har­ri­son “Pete” Williams would have been the first sen­a­tor expelled from Con­gress since 1862 when Jesse Bright of Indi­ana sold guns to the Con­fed­er­a­cy, and he was the first sen­a­tor to go to jail since 1906 when Joe Bur­ton of Kansas served a stretch in the big house for tak­ing a bribe in a mail fraud case.

But, hey, I got to shake his hand!

Post Script: Tom Pax­ton wrote and record­ed a hit song about ABSCAM enti­tled, I Thought You Were An Arab. An excerpt: “When you hand­ed me the brief­case full of cash,/I accept­ed with a wink./You can catch it on the evening news you rat,/Now I’m head­ed for the clink.” And: “I smiled for the camera,/I could­n’t see it from my seat./So I thought you were an Arab,/And all the time you were the heat.”

“There is no dis­tinct­ly Amer­i­can crim­i­nal class except Con­gress.” – Mark Twain

Near the end of my third year at UVA, some of my fra­ter­ni­ty broth­ers planned to car­a­van to Mary Bald­win Col­lege to take their girl­friends to The Rafters, a dance hall with a live band. One of them was engaged to a Mary Bald­win senior, who was leg­endary for set­ting up suc­cess­ful blind dates. She offered to match me up with one of her friends. My expe­ri­ence with blind dates had been dis­as­trous, to put it mild­ly, but her rep­u­ta­tion con­vinced me to sign on.

Mary Bald­win sits on the side of a hill in Staunton. We pulled to the curb at the foot of a flight of stairs that climbed to a yel­low build­ing front­ed with mas­sive white columns. We entered the lob­by; the sec­ond floor doors opened; and ten girls came down the steps sin­gle file. One of them caught my eye. Auburn hair, chin length, flipped up on one side, stun­ning hazel eyes. I won­dered which lucky guy would be paired with her.

When my friend’s fiancé intro­duced me to my date, the girl with the auburn hair flashed a pix­ie grin that took my breath away.

We had a lot of fun that night, and I drove back to UVA in a daze.

I asked her out again and she accepted.

On our third date, I gave her my fra­ter­ni­ty pin. “Pin­ning” was a big deal back then, sort of a pre-engage­ment com­mit­ment. I was rush­ing it big-time, but she didn’t turn me down, so I thought maybe I had a chance.

Then the school year end­ed, and I despaired. She’d planned to grad­u­ate in three years. To fin­ish the few remain­ing class­es she need­ed, she’d enrolled in sum­mer school at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty. She didn’t intend to return to Mary Bald­win. I was com­mit­ted to a job in Vir­ginia for the sum­mer and had anoth­er year at UVA still to go. I thought I’d nev­er see her again.

In a great ges­ture of friend­ship, one of my fra­ter­ni­ty broth­ers offered to dri­ve me to Boston to see her that sum­mer. I took a week off from my job and spent it with her.

She took me to one of her class­es. A guy who played gui­tar for The Jef­fer­son Air­plane sat in the row behind us. A full­back on the Boston Uni­ver­si­ty foot­ball team sat on the oth­er side of her. They were very inter­est­ed in her, and they were both good-look­ing, nice guys. I hat­ed their guts.

We were sit­ting on a blan­ket hav­ing a pic­nic lunch in front of the camel exhib­it at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston when I asked her to con­sid­er return­ing to Mary Bald­win for anoth­er year.

“Why?” she said.

“I want to keep see­ing you.”

She looked at me curi­ous­ly, as though she didn’t under­stand, and I real­ized I had to tell her the truth. I swal­lowed hard. “I want you to mar­ry me after graduation.”

I don’t remem­ber much about the camels, the zoo, or the rest of the day. She was all I could think about after she said she want­ed to mar­ry me, too.

That fall, I met her fam­i­ly. I over­heard a neigh­bor talk­ing to her father. “What says they’re going to get mar­ried?” the neigh­bor asked. “That old pin, I guess.” The neigh­bor wouldn’t let up. “Is he going to give her an engage­ment ring?” A long pause. Then, “I don’t know.”

I planned to give her an engage­ment ring, but being flat-out broke, I hadn’t fig­ured out how I would spring for it. Back at school, I asked her what kind of ring she want­ed, think­ing it would be a tra­di­tion­al dia­mond. She launched into a detailed descrip­tion of a green jew­el sur­round­ed by a cir­cle of lit­tle dia­monds on a gold band. “A lit­tle green flower,” she said, giv­ing me that grin that got me in trou­ble in the first place.

I knew noth­ing about jew­el­ry, but I fig­ured a lit­tle green flower would be hard to find. The first ring I saw in the first jew­el­ry store I walked into sat in the cen­ter of a glass case near the door – an emer­ald sur­round­ed by a cir­cle of dia­monds perched on a gold band. A lit­tle green flower.

I thought it was meant to be! Until the jew­el­er told me its price. When I recov­ered my voice, I explained that I had to have that ring even though I couldn’t pay for it. The jew­el­er returned the ring to its red satin bed inside the glass case and turned the key on the lock.

Short of armed rob­bery, I couldn’t think of a way to get that ring.

“Why don’t you sell your stamp col­lec­tion?” my moth­er said.

When I was a lit­tle boy, my moth­er and I would save our loose change. Every cou­ple weeks, she would take me to a stamp collector’s store in Williams­burg and drop me off while she gro­cery-shopped, and I pieced togeth­er a lit­tle col­lec­tion of stamps that didn’t cost much.

“My stamp collection’s not worth any­thing,” I told my mom.

“Some of those stamps are pret­ty old,” she said. “Give it a try.”

I went to a collector’s shop in Char­lottesville. When the own­er gave me his bid, I almost faint­ed. My moth­er was right. Over the fif­teen years my stamps lay in a shoe­box in my bed­room clos­et, a few of them had become valu­able. The sale got me with­in strik­ing dis­tance of the ring’s price, and I bor­rowed the rest.

The lit­tle green flower burned a hole in my blue blazer’s side pock­et as I drove my auburn-haired blind date down Route 250 at noon toward the new Chi­nese restau­rant every­one was talk­ing about. It was closed. I sped back toward Char­lottesville and drove around fran­ti­cal­ly for what seemed like sev­en­teen hours, look­ing for a roman­tic lunch spot where I could give her the ring. There was no good place!

Des­per­ate, I lurched off the street into the Howard Johnson’s park­ing lot and pulled her by the hand into the din­ing room. Dur­ing the six years it took to get a wait­ress to take our order, I began to chick­en out. I had pro­posed in front of a camel. Now I was giv­ing her an engage­ment ring at a Howard Johnson’s. I was blow­ing it!

It didn’t mat­ter. I had to get that ring on her fin­ger before I had a ner­vous break­down. I put my hand in my pock­et to draw strength from the flower. You have THE RING, I told myself. That’s what’s important.

“You know that engage­ment ring?” I said.

“Yeah?” An unsus­pect­ing tone.

“Which hand does it go on?” Because I was so stu­pid I tru­ly didn’t know.

“This one,” she said, extend­ing her left hand across a plate of fried clams.

“Which fin­ger?” I’m not that stu­pid. I was stalling while I tried to pull myself together.

She showed me her ring finger.

I took a deep breath, pulled the ring out of my pock­et, and slipped it on. It only made it half-way down her fin­ger because she clenched her fist with super­hu­man strength, crush­ing my fin­gers, both of us shak­ing all over, she from excite­ment, me from excru­ci­at­ing pain.

We got mar­ried the week­end after grad­u­a­tion. We had three chil­dren. Four grand­chil­dren came along a gen­er­a­tion lat­er. We cel­e­brate our forty-ninth anniver­sary next month.

My blind date still wears the lit­tle green flower. As I wrote this, just to see if I could raise that pix­ie grin, I asked her what she thought my old stamp col­lec­tion would be worth today if we’d held on to it.

“Not as much as my ring,” she said.

She’s right about that.

In 1985, my for­mer home state of Vir­ginia came with­in eight days of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent man. Vir­ginia has the longest rela­tion­ship with the death penal­ty of any state, hav­ing exe­cut­ed more than 1,300 peo­ple, start­ing with Cap­tain George Kendall by fir­ing squad in Jamestown in 1608 for espi­onage, and the pace has con­tin­ued in mod­ern times. Since the Supreme Court affirmed the death penal­ty in 1977, Vir­ginia has exe­cut­ed 113 inmates.

For 300 years, Vir­ginia hanged cap­i­tal defen­dants. In 1909 the state aban­doned the gal­lows in favor of the elec­tric chair. “Old Sparky” is still avail­able in Vir­ginia at the option of a con­demned inmate, but most now choose to die by lethal injection.

Earl Wash­ing­ton, Jr., was 23 in Sep­tem­ber, 1985, when the Culpeper Cir­cuit Court sen­tenced him to death. He had lived all his life in Fauquier Coun­ty. The local schools pegged him as a slow learn­er and placed him in spe­cial edu­ca­tion class­es. He dropped out of high school and worked as a day labor­er, most­ly on local farms.

On the night of May 21, 1983, Earl and his broth­er were drink­ing at his aunt’s house in Beale­ton. They argued and Earl got mad. He had seen a pis­tol in the house across Route 17 when he used the tele­phone there.

At 3 a.m. that night the sound of break­ing glass awak­ened Hazel Weeks, a 78 year old wid­ow. She got out of bed and found a young black man in her hall­way. He hit her over the head with a chair and struck her twice more while she was on the floor. She offered to pay him to spare her life. “Where is your mon­ey?” he said. Blood soak­ing her gown, she stag­gered to her bed­room and gave him her purse. He took it and fled. She lat­er dis­cov­ered that he had also stolen a pis­tol from her kitchen.

When Deputy Den­ny Zeets respond­ed to Hazel’s call, he heard gun­shots across Route 17. At Earl’s aunt’s house, he found Hazel’s purse and Earl’s broth­er with a gun­shot wound to his foot. He said Earl shot him acci­dent­ly and ran away. At dawn, the police arrest­ed Earl in a field near Hazel’s house.

A series of inter­ro­ga­tions fol­lowed. Earl con­fessed to the assault on Hazel ear­ly on. The inves­ti­ga­tors then ques­tioned him about a string of vio­lent crimes near War­ren­ton. He con­fessed to ten felonies, includ­ing sev­er­al sex­u­al assaults.

A year ear­li­er, Rebec­ca Williams, a 19 year old moth­er of three, crawled out on the porch of her apart­ment in near­by Culpeper, naked and bleed­ing from 38 stab wounds. She sur­vived only long enough to tell her neigh­bors that a lone black man attacked and raped her. Her mur­der remained unsolved when Earl attacked Hazel. Under per­sis­tent ques­tion­ing, Earl con­fessed, pro­vid­ing details the inves­ti­ga­tors believed only Rebecca’s mur­der­er could have known.

In the lead-up to Earl’s tri­al, he recant­ed all the con­fes­sions except the attack on Hazel, and facts emerged that cleared him of most of the crimes. By Jan­u­ary, 1984, the pros­e­cu­tion dropped all charges except those involv­ing Hazel and Rebec­ca, and Earl’s tri­al went forward. 

The key issue was the verac­i­ty of Earl’s con­fes­sion to Rebecca’s murder/rape. The inves­ti­ga­tors did not record the inter­ro­ga­tions, but Agent Reese Wilmore had writ­ten a lengthy tran­script of a final ses­sion about Rebec­ca, and Earl had signed it. Wilmore read the tran­script to the jury.

The defense argued that Earl con­fessed to crimes he didn’t com­mit because he is men­tal­ly impaired. Experts tes­ti­fied that his IQ scores ranked in the bot­tom two per­cent of adults and esti­mat­ed his men­tal age as 10 years old.

The jury found Earl’s con­fes­sion con­vinc­ing beyond a rea­son­able doubt. They rec­om­mend­ed the death sen­tence and the judge fol­lowed their recommendation. 

Earl arrived on death row in Meck­len­burg on May 4, 1984. Unlike Cal­i­for­nia, where appeals last longer than the defendant’s life, Virginia’s appel­late process is stream­lined. Earl’s appeals to the Vir­ginia and U.S. Supreme Courts failed quick­ly, and the state sched­uled his exe­cu­tion for Sep­tem­ber 5, 1985. Fed­er­al habeas appeals were still avail­able, but Earl’s attor­ney aban­doned the case, leav­ing him unrep­re­sent­ed as his final days ticked by.

A fel­low death row inmate, Joe Gia­r­ratano, thought Earl was inno­cent. A high school dropout with no legal train­ing, Gia­r­ratano draft­ed and filed a brief argu­ing that exe­cut­ing a cap­i­tal defen­dant, who had no lawyer, was unconstitutional.

The jail­house-lawyer fil­ing caught the eye of a Man­hat­tan law firm, Paul, Weiss. The firm sent a young asso­ciate to Meck­len­burg to meet with Gia­r­ratano. The first words out of Joe’s mouth were: “Earl Wash­ing­ton has an IQ of 69, an exe­cu­tion date three weeks away, and no lawyer. What the hell are you going to do about it?”

Attor­neys at Paul, Weiss respond­ed by work­ing around the clock for the next ten days. On August 27, the firm filed a peti­tion for a stay of exe­cu­tion. It was grant­ed just eight days before Earl’s exe­cu­tion date.

The stay gave the firm breath­ing room to launch a robust appel­late defense, and for the next decade it man­aged to hold the state at bay.

Foren­sic sci­ence advanced. In 1993, a DNA analy­sis cast doubt on Earl’s guilt, but a rule in Vir­ginia barred appel­late courts from con­sid­er­ing evi­dence raised more than 21 days after a jury ver­dict. Earl’s appeals failed.

By late 1993, only a Governor’s par­don stood between Earl and Old Sparky. Gov­er­nor Dou­glas Wilder was Virginia’s first and only black gov­er­nor. His crit­ics claim he feared that par­don­ing a black man accused of mur­der might jeop­ar­dize his pres­i­den­tial aspi­ra­tions. Wilder vehe­ment­ly denied this. For what­ev­er rea­son, he delayed his deci­sion until his last day in office and then split the baby. He denied the par­don, but com­mut­ed Earl’s death sen­tence to life in prison.

By 2000, DNA analy­sis had advanced in sophis­ti­ca­tion, and a new bat­tery of tests exon­er­at­ed Earl. Gov­er­nor James Gilmore grant­ed him a par­don, and he walked out of prison in 2001.

In 2002, DNA sam­ples in Rebecca’s case matched the DNA of Ken­neth Tins­ley, a man con­vict­ed of rape in Albe­mar­le Coun­ty. He pled guilty to Rebecca’s murder/rape in 2007.

Why did Earl con­fess to a mur­der he didn’t com­mit and how did he pro­vide details about it that only the mur­der­er should have known? The easy answer would be that his inter­roga­tors coerced the con­fes­sion, but there’s anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty. In a fas­ci­nat­ing book about Earl’s case, An Expend­able Man, by Mar­garet Edds, she dis­cuss­es the the­o­ry that Earl spent his life on pins and nee­dles, not under­stand­ing what peo­ple want­ed from him, but try­ing to guess. He was anx­ious to please, sus­cep­ti­ble to sug­ges­tions, and sen­si­tive to cues, hints, and body lan­guage. A close look at the inter­ro­ga­tions indi­cates that he gave his ques­tion­ers the answers he thought they want­ed and that they unin­ten­tion­al­ly tipped him off to the details of the crimes. For exam­ple, he orig­i­nal­ly said Rebec­ca was black, but after read­ing the reac­tions of his ques­tion­ers, he quick­ly changed his answer to white.

In last month’s post, I stat­ed my view that Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalk­er, deserved to be put to death, but Earl’s case stands as a con­vinc­ing coun­ter­ar­gu­ment against the death penal­ty. Only a com­bi­na­tion of serendip­i­tous cir­cum­stances saved him: Giarratano’s improb­a­ble inter­ven­tion, Paul, Weiss’s last minute hero­ics, and Gov­er­nor Wilder’s pre­car­i­ous commutation.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Earl’s cau­tion­ary tale is not unique. The advance­ment of foren­sic sci­ence has exposed scores of wrong­ful con­vic­tions. Since 1973, 155 death row inmates have been exonerated.

The death penal­ty is unfor­giv­ing. One mis­take is too many, and we’ve almost made 155 that we know about. One way to rec­on­cile the con­flict­ing emo­tions inspired by the Night Stalker’s sav­agery and Earl’s sto­ry would be to restrict the death penal­ty to the most heinous crimes where there is absolute­ly no doubt of guilt. If we can’t do that, we should abol­ish it alto­geth­er, because the risk of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent defen­dant under cur­rent laws is too great. 

Post Script: In 2007, Vir­ginia paid Earl $1.9 mil­lion to set­tle his claim of wrong­ful con­vic­tion. At that time, he was a main­te­nance work­er, mar­ried, and liv­ing in Vir­ginia Beach.

In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Vir­ginia that the exe­cu­tion of a men­tal­ly impaired defen­dant is unconstitutional.