At 5:59 p.m. on November 6, just one minute before his execution, James Blake Colburn received a phone call that saved his life. Made by the United States Supreme Court, the call reprieved Colburn of death by lethal injection. Colburn, who is severely mentally ill, is now part of a newly reexamined case that begs the question: Should the mentally ill be spared execution despite the crime committed?
The Supreme Court now has 30 days to make a decision. In a similar corporal case last June, the court decided that executing the mentally retarded is cruel and unusual punishment. Now the matter is not one of intelligence, but of the control over one's own mind.
Colburn has been diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia, and his lawyers are arguing that he should be treated as incompetent, thus sparing him the death penalty. Colburn called Wednesday's decision "a relief. It was a blessing from God."
