INDIANAPOLIS – The life of a convicted child killer is in the governor’s hands.
Attorneys for death row inmate Jeffrey Weisheit have directly written Gov. Mike Braun asking to delay his Nov. 5 execution.
Weisheit is scheduled to die by lethal injection for the 2010 murders of 8-year-old Alyssa Lynch and 5-year-old Caleb Lynch in a Vanderburgh County arson.
“We believe that his chronic mental illness and brain impairment provide compelling reasons to exercise mercy,” Weisheit attorney Joseph Perkovich said in a letter addressed to Gov. Braun, shared with Indiana’s I-Team.
The letter asks Gov. Braun to allow time for brain scans to shed light on Weisheit’s mental state and review the findings before deciding whether to carry out the death sentence. The collection, analysis, and consideration of that information would require the state to delay Weisheit’s execution, the letter states.
This week, the Indiana Parole Board recommended Gov. Braun deny clemency and follow through with the execution. That recommendation is nonbinding, and Gov. Braun could choose to allow Weisheit to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In a statement to Indiana’s I-Team, Perkovich pushed back on some of the Board’s rationale.
“The central rationale of their recommendation, that the jury ‘were given sufficient information to come to the decision they reached,’ was simply not the case,” Perkovich said. “At trial, the prosecution used expert testimony to erroneously insist Mr. Weisheit had not suffered numerous brain injuries before this crime. The jury then decided his fate without reliable scientific information to illuminate the extent of those injuries and their consequences for his behavior.”
While the State has claimed issues of mental health came up in Weisheit’s prior court proceedings, Perkovich claims legal technicalities prevented thorough scientific evidence from being considered.
Perkovich provided Braun with an assessment from a neuroscience expert, Dr. R. Andrew Chambers, about the level of information that could be expected from a brain scan. Dr. Chambers said “high resolution structural and functional neuroimaging” and analysis “will provide important new information and understanding about the degree of culpability and deterrability in this specific case.”
A spokesman for Gov. Braun told Indiana’s I-Team there’s no set timeline for his decision.
Perkovich is additionally asking Gov. Braun to direct the Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC) to review its lethal injection procedures, in the wake of Tennessee’s botched execution of Christa Pike.
Indiana and Tennessee both use the drug Pentobarbital to put prisoners to death. The IDOC has already spent $275,000 on the drugs to execute Weisheit and has said it’s confident in its ability to carry out the execution.
