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Court must consider death row inmate's claims
By The Associated Press NASHVILLE (AP) — An appeals court is giving death row inmate Gregory Thompson another chance to prove he had ineffective counsel at trial.
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Email ArticleThompson was convicted in August 1985 of abducting Brenda Blanton Lane from a Shelbyville Wal-Mart parking lot in January of that year, driving her to a rural area in Coffee County and killing her with a rusty butcher knife.
Lane, 28, a former Shelbyville newspaper reporter, was working in public relations for the United Methodist Publishing House in Nashville at the time of her death.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on Friday asked the district court to consider four claims of ineffective assistance, including whether Thompson's defense attorney should have cross-examined a psychiatric expert who testified for the government.
The appeals court also overturned a lower court by ruling that Thompson deserves an evidentiary hearing on whether he is mentally competent to be executed.
"Under Tennessee law ... a prisoner is not competent for execution if he 'lacks the mental capacity to understand the fact of the impending execution and the reason for it,'" the ruling states. The appeals court found the Tennessee Supreme Court erred in ruling that Thompson's severe delusions were irrelevant to his competency.