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Staff writer Andrea Weigl can be reached at 829-4848 or aweigl@newsobserver.com.
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SIMILAR CASES
Other death row inmates in North Carolina with claims of severe mental illness:
The inmate: George Page, 66, of Winston-Salem.
The crime: In February 1995, Page shot and killed Winston-Salem police Officer Stephen Amos II.
Mental illness issues: Page served 16 years in the military and is a Vietnam War veteran. He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder. He reported hearing voices telling him to kill someone in 1978 and suffered from hallucinations in the 1980s. At the time of the crime, his attorneys say, Page was suffering from a manic, flashback episode and began randomly shooting out of his apartment window, hitting Amos. One of the prosecution's key mental health witness later said she would have changed her testimony if shown medical records indicating that the defendant suffered from severe brain damage before the murder.
Case status: His February 2004 execution was delayed as a result of a federal lawsuit challenging North Carolina's method of execution.
The inmate: David Lynch, 46, of Gastonia.
The crime: Lynch was convicted of fatally shooting his neighbors, Bobby Anderson and his 12-year-old daughter, India, in December 1991.
Mental illness issues: Several months before the crime, Lynch checked himself in to a psychiatric hospital. He had recently driven across the country without food or sleep. He told doctors that he heard a persistent emergency tone, which others didn't hear. He told them that he had suicidal and homicidal thoughts. He also thought he was being persecuted by neighbors.
He entered an insanity plea at his trial that was rejected by the jury, which found he was not legally insane at the time of the killings.
Case status: This month, a panel of three judges at the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., rejected Lynch's appeal. His attorney plans to appeal to the full court.
ANDREA WEIGL
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Own worst enemy?At trial, LeGrande introduced evidence that helped the prosecutors, evidence they could not have introduced on their own. He insulted jurors and got the sentence he asked them to impose, according to the lawyers working on his behalf but without his permission. (Coleman was kicked out of his only meeting with LeGrande after 30 minutes.)In 1998, LeGrande's family tried to file appeals on his behalf. Dr. Richard Dudley Jr., a New York psychiatrist, talked to LeGrande for six hours by saying he was doing research and hiding his real aim: evaluating LeGrande's competence. Dudley concluded that LeGrande was psychotic and had grandiose and persecutory delusions.But when LeGrande's relatives tried to have him declared incompetent to handle his own appeals, the judge asked LeGrande what he thought. LeGrande argued that the doctor needed his consent for a legitimate evaluation -- the same argument the state made. The judge sided with LeGrande and rejected the relatives' attempt to intervene.What happened in LeGrande's case fits a pattern, said Amnesty's Gunawardena-Vaughn. "In many instances in the case of mentally ill offenders, they are their own worst enemies," she said.Although most death penalty appeals raise the issue of competency of the inmates' lawyers, this one instead questions the competency of LeGrande because he was his own lawyer.Coleman said he thinks the judges failed to hold legitimate competency hearings by allowing LeGrande to have a say."You can't have a hearing that is one-sided. You can't have a hearing where the people who assert his incompetence aren't permitted to present a case," Coleman said. "The judge has to basically take control, make sure the defendant is examined, and make sure that there is a lawyer appointed to present the case that he's not competent. That's never been done in this case."Coleman said he thinks the trial judges failed to protect LeGrande, and it falls to Easley."If the courts aren't able to protect them, I think the governor has to protect them," he said.
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