Doubts On Death Row

By Jill Smolowe

WILLIAM HANCE'S APPOINTMENT with the electric chair was set for 7 p.m. Thursday. On Wednesday, the Georgia board of pardons and paroles rejected Hance's appeal for clemency. The next day, both a state and federal court refused to halt the execution; then the U.S. Supreme Court, after a two-hour stay, denied Hance's appeal. Soon after, Hance was strapped into Georgia's electric chair. At 10:10 p.m. he was pronounced dead. The legal skirmishing had gained him exactly 190 extra minutes of life.

Hance became the 231st convict to be executed since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. But this execution raised more disturbing questions than most. For one thing, a woman who was among the 12 jurors to sentence Hance to death in 1984 has sworn that she never concurred in the supposedly unanimous vote. There is also jolting evidence that race prejudice played a central role in the jury's deliberations. Finally, Hance, a black former Marine who was found guilty of bludgeoning to death two prostitutes in 1978, may have been mildly retarded. Douglas Pullen, a prosecutor who helped investigate the first murder case, maintains that "at the very least, this man had a borderline I.Q. That is not retarded." But Hance's trial in a military court for the second murder ended in the reversal of a life sentence after jurors determined that he lacked the capacity for premeditation.

Two weeks ago, Gayle Daniels, the only black juror on the 1984 sentencing panel, swore in an affidavit that she did not vote for execution because she "did not believe ((Hance)) knew what he was doing at the time of his crimes." Daniels recounted how jurors initially favored a life sentence. But mindful of the prosecutor's warning that Hance could be paroled in just a few years, they sent notes to the judge asking what a "life sentence" meant. The judge never responded. After that, several jurors began pushing for death. When Daniels held out, the remaining jurors, impatient to get home for Mother's Day, decided to tell the judge that the vote was unanimous. Daniels said she was so terrified of getting into trouble for her intransigence that she answered yes when the jurors were polled on their verdict.

Her account has been corroborated by another juror, Patricia LeMay. In an affidavit, LeMay, who is white, also charged that racism played a large part in the deliberations. According to LeMay, comments by other jurors included "the nigger admitted he did it" and "he should fry."

The Hance execution comes in the midst of growing scrutiny of the death penalty. A month ago, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote an impassioned dissent in which he concluded that "the death-penalty experiment has failed." By contrast, Justice Antonin Scalia, a supporter of capital punishment who is fed up with last-minute appeals before the court, last week chastised a defense lawyer for waiting too long to seek a federal stay for a Texas execution. That outburst came during arguments for a case involving a federal court's right to intervene in a state execution. Tempers may grow even more heated when the Justices begin debate on a Missouri case, accepted last week, that provides room for a more sweeping review of the appeals process. For William Hance, these deliberations will come too late.

With reporting by Lisa H. Towle/Raleigh