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A Competence Question
According to a recent story in The Washington Post, Thomas Lee "Sonny"
Hays of Oklahoma may become the first man in the world to be legally executed
by a lethal injection of drugs. That that method of execution is at present untried
and therefore uncertain is the reason so much is being said and written about the
case.
But another aspect of the Sonny Hays case has gone relatively unnoticed, and
that overlooked aspect raises a serious question of competency. Ironically, the
state of Oklahoma is being challenged to grant a plea of mental incompetency to
the convicted killer; before the trial is history, however, it may be the state and
its judicial system which proves to be mentally incompetent.
According to the story in the Post, Hays was convicted of a murder some three
months after he allegedly committed it on March 9, 1977, and was sentenced to
death. The incident all started simply enough, and ended in a baffling trail of
circumstantial evidence which led to Hays' eventual apprehension.
Briefly, here's what happened on that March evening, as reported in the Post:
Everett Leonard Vance, 45, was found sliot, to death in his Muskogee shoe store.
His wife testified that he was still alive at 5:10 p.m. when he called home to say he
would be working late. Sonny Hays, who had lived in the town all his life and
shopped at the shoe store, had been paid the day before and planned to use the
Money to buy groceries and a new pair of boots, his friends said. Witnesses placed
Hays, who has a life-long drinking problem, downtown at about 5:15 p.m. being
turned away from two bars, one of them 180 feet from the shoe store. By 5:30
Hays, appearing intoxicated and carrying a brown paper bag, staggered across an
intersection into the path of a car. The three teen-aged boys in the car testified
that Hays had reached into the bag, pulled out a gun and waved it at them after
they shouted insulting remarks at him. They sped away, ignoring the red light. A
policeman at the same intersection did not see the gun, but followed Hays from
the intersection. Trying to elude the police officer, Hays crossed along the edge of
a service station about the same time as the owner looked out the window and saw
a man toss a dark object into the back of a truck parked on his lot. A short
distance away, Hays was arrested on a charge of public drunkenness, and police
found that his bag contained a pair of old cowboy boots and $llO in loose bills. In
his pockets police discovered two packs of cigarettes and. two lighters.
As Hays was being arrested, the service station owner told the police that.
Hays had thrown something--he believed it might have been a liquor bottle--into
the back of the truck. But when they retrieved the object, it was a .38 caliber
Llama revolver containing one empty chamber, two spent cartridges and three
live rounds. Vance's body was discovered at 7:30 p.m., and about an hour later, as
suspicion turned toward Hays, police returned to the service station and in the
top of a trash can, about 20 feet from where the gun was found, they found two
more pairs of boots with the price tags still on them. Later they learned that one
of the lighters and one package of cigarettes in Hays' possession had belonged to
Vance. Just over three months later, Hays, who still says he is innocent, was
convicted of the murder and sentenced to death.
Volume 15, No. 3
Published biweekly by the students of the Capitol Campus of The
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Editorial/Opinion
Pennsylvania State University
Capitol Campus
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Co-Editors in Chief
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William J. Neil
Circulation 2,500
Thursday, October 15, 1981
October 15, 1981
Despite the mountains of circumstantial evidence, there are many problems
with Hays' case, many of which serve to illustrate the incompetence of the
Oklahoma judicial system.
For one, Hays was never given a blood test although he had been drinking
heavily before the murder and had been picked up for public drunkenness; his
drunkenness was never brought up as a mitigating circumstance in the murder.
Also, Hays was never given a paraffin test to determine whether he had recently
fired a gun, and the prosecutor failed to produce the fingerprint evidence from the
store's cash drawer.
Hays' court-appointed lawyer, William Settle of Muskogee, has also been
accused of doing an inadequate job in Hays' defense. Settle raised no objection to
the fact that every member of the jury had no philosophical problem with the
death penalty, and there was no effort at an insanity defense even though he had
been involuntarily committed to mental hospitals four times before the murder
and was later diagnosed in prison in 1978 as a paranoid schizophrenic.
Hays' only way out now appears to be through two young lawyers, Kent
Eldridge and Charles F. Cox, who obtained a last-minute postponement on a
September 14 execution date when they entered the case two months ago for a $1
fee on behalf of Hays' mother. They are asking a federal appeals court to declare
Hays mentally incompetent so that they can officially take over the case. And if
that succeeds, they will appeal his conviction not only on grounds of competency
but also on the basis that he received an unfair trial because his court-appointed
lawyer (Settle) did not do an adequate job. If they fail to convince the court that
Hays is mentally incompetent, he is expected to be executed quickly. And since he
is not actively fighting the execution--further evidence of his lack of
awareness--there is nothing to stand in the way.
In their task of proving mental incompetency, the lawyers should have little
trouble; Hays' acquaintances—dare we call them friends?—will support them, and
his track record speaks rather well for itself.
Family members say they first noticed that something was wrong with Hays
in the mid-1950s when he came home after serving with the Army in Germany. He
had begun to drink heavily and was getting into fights, even becoming violent
with his family and girlfriends. He complained of odd pains and sometimes
coughed up blood. But the one time his parents borrowed the money to send him
to a specialist in Tulsa, Hays instead took the money and went drinking. And
there was a plethora of violent incidents. One day he attacked and demolished his
mother's sewing machine, claiming that it was trying to kill his father. Court
records show that between 1967 and 1974 Hays was committed to mental
hospitals four times because of delusions and violent behavior generally related to
his alcoholism. Although he has a high school education, Hays has refused to read
or write anything since he went to prison, and there have been reports of suicide
attempts and long periods when he would remain mute. By January of this year, a
prison doctor discovered that Hays was apparently trying to starve himself to
death; he had stopped eating, shaving and showering. More recently, Hays has
insisted to anyone willing to listen to him that he is God. And Hays has been
married six times.
Alton Franks, a fellow inmate of Hays' for about three and one-half years, says
Hays is "nutty as a fruit cake. Sonny Hays has been crazy since I've been here.
Sometimes he won't talk to you for six months. Sometimes he'll go out to the yard
and cuss God. Sometimes he throws his clothes out, and stands there in his cell
naked with a blindfold around his eyes. He can't see anybody, so he figures they
can't see him. He has his good days and his bad days. But when he goes into one of
them moods, it might last a month, two months, one time it lasted a year," he was
quoted in the Post story. "I don't mean he's a blathering idiot. But the man's just
not right." Franks also tells of the times when he and the others on death row
would try to feed Hays, and when they tried to convince him to appeal to the
Supreme Court, but without much success.
The Oklahoma court system, once again holding its competency up to question,
has never given Hays any systematic psychiatric care at the prison, and he has
never been given a formal psychiatric evaluation. Only a few weeks ago, Hays
agreed to speak to an outside psychologist, Richard Sternoff, arranged for by Cox
and Eldridge. After his examination, Sternoff concluded, "My clinical impression
would be of a chronic schizophrenic process associated with an organic brain
disfunction secondary to alcoholism. In a word, he is not competent."
While it is not the purpose of this editorial to determine whether Thomas Lee
"Sonny" Hays is guilty or innocent, after learning the above facts it should
become obvious to the judiciary of Oklahoma that Hays is definitely not "playing
with a full deck." Unless, that is, they consider attacking a sewing machine,
calling oneself God, being married six times before reaching the ripe old age of 45,
or any of the other bizarre antics stated above normal behavior out there in
Oklahoma.
Indeed, there is something dreadfully wrong with a court system that
assembles a jury which is unanimously in favor of the death penalty, does not
conduct paraffin tests or 'require fingerprints when it should be standard
procedure, and does not administer psychiatric aid to patients in dire need of such
treatment. Add to this an obviously incompetent state-appointed lawyer, who
later remarked about the decision to execute Hays, "It doesn't bother me," and
one gets the impression that perhaps lawlessness is soon to be a way of life in
Oklahoma. Why, it is already beginning to get out of hand, judging by the
comments of Muskogee District Attorney Mike Turpen, who prosecuted the case.
Turpen said that death "might be better" for Hays than spending his life at
McAlester, the state's most dangerous prison. It is a place of cold metal bars,
murders and homosexual rapes, which Turpen himself calls "The McAlester
Museum of Horrors." When a district attorney openly admits the terrible
inadequacies of the system, and outright says the prisoner(s) would be better off
dead, things can't get much worse. Or can they?
The criminal justice system of Oklahoma has proven itself incompetent in its
handling of the Hays case thus far. Let's only hope and pray that if Hays is
eventually condemned to die, this erstwhile inept band of bunglers will have the
decency to execute him in a conventional, painless and humane fashion.
C.C. Reader
--William J. Neil