July 17, 1998

Dear Editor,

Emile Duhamel, incompetent for execution in 1995, waited since september
1997 for the Court to rule on a subsequent application for writ of
habeas corpus to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA).  The
application states that the Attorney General of Texas, the Cameron
County District Attorney, and a federal district court judge all agreed
that the law authoerized the TCCA to consider the new evidence of
Duhamel's progessive mental deterioration.  Ususally the TCCA rules on a
request within two to three months.

The court was unequipped for Duhamel's incompetency claim.  In 1975
executions were unconstitutional.  The legislature struck the entire
section on execution competency.  It has not re-enacted procedures.  The
void remains.

The Correctional Managed Care Advisory Committeee of the Texas Deartment
of Criminal Justice witholds treatment.  Duhamel, age 52, had
schizophrenia, and major depression; he was mentally retarted with an IQ
of 56, diabetic, demented, illiterate, delusional, reclusive, "not work
capable", and locked down (unable to leave his cell).  He depended on a
cell neighbor to complete forms required to take him to the infirmary.

Unlike psychiatric prisons, death row does not have air conditioning.
Psychotropic drugs heighten body temperature.  The infirmary treated
Duhamel's heat rash in the week of his death.  An outside temperature of
100 degrees means it was 110 degrees in his cell.  Death results when
the body reaches and stays at 104 degrees.  Fans that used to circulate
air are gone.  Inmates can buy one 8 inch fan.  Duhamel had no money and
no fan.

A prisoner observed that "Duhamel's body was stiff as a board".  How
long was it since a nurse stationed just outside the wing had seen him?

"Apparently he died of natural causes", said prison spokesman, David
Nunnelee.  Was the heat a natural cause? Was his mental incapacity to
ask for the help he needed, the negelect of the system to adequately
address his mental and physical health care needs, the extended legal
inaction by the court natural causes?

Others like Emile Duhamel are on death row today.  Their situations will
continue to raise serious quesions on the lack of procedures for
determining competency to be executed, and inhumane medical and
psychiatric care that they receive.

Sincerely,

Genevieve Hearon