THE US: The execution in Georgia by lethal injection of a man who believes Sigourney Weaver is God and sees little red men in the pupils of other people's eyes is set to proceed today unless last minute legal moves to save him are successful.
The case not only involves the controversial execution of a mentally-ill person but also the execution of a man who was a juvenile of only 17 when he committed the murder - an issue which has prompted the EU to lodge an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief with the US Supreme Court for only the second time.
The execution "would violate international norms" on the treatment of children, the EU pleadings insist, including the American Convention on Human Rights, which the US has signed but not ratified.
The execution of Alexander Williams (33) was scheduled for last week but postponed by the state's parole board while it took further independent psychiatric advice. Williams's lawyers still hold out some hope that the US Supreme Court will consider intervening.
While the court has ruled that a convicted murderer cannot be executed if he is so mentally ill he does not understand why he is being put to death, it has yet to rule on a case where a murderer has to be forcibly medicated to reach that understanding.
Williams, who needs constant medication, is only "synthetically sane", his lawyer insists, although the prison authorities insist that he has only twice refused medication.
He was sentenced to death for the 1986 killing of a 16-year-old, abducted from a parking lot in Augusta, raped and shot four times in the head. After the killing, Williams drove away in her family car and used her parents credit cards.
At his trial, his court-appointed lawyer raised neither the issue of his sanity nor his age, but he was subsequently diagnosed as a schizophrenic with "chronic paranoid delusions".
Although Georgia does not allow the execution of the mentally retarded, one of the first two states to adopt such a prohibition, the state has no ban on executing mentally ill inmates.
The Supreme Court in 1998 ruled that the execution of those under 18 is legal but only the US, Congo, and Iran do so.
The EU has been joined in protesting by campaign groups and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms Mary Robinson.
