UPDATE: Rep. Hawk’s bill to prevent executions of inmates that have intellectual disability passes House and Senate
Tennessee’s House and Senate has approved a bill that seeks to end executions of death row inmates who are found to have intellectual disabilities.
The legislation, sponsored in the House by Rep. David Hawk of Greeneville, passed in each chamber by wide margins on Monday. As the bill now heads to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk, it comes as death row inmate Pervis Payne and his attorneys are fighting to block Payne’s execution permanently, as they argue he is intellectually disabled.
Payne was sentenced to death for the 1987 stabbing deaths in Memphis of a mother and her two year old daughter. The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that executing someone who has an intellectual disability violates the US Constitution’s 8th amendment statute of cruel and unusual punishment.
