TCASK still opposes Thompson execution

Death penalty opponents are challenging the scheduled execution of a man convicted for the death of a former Shelbyville Times-Gazette reporter who was the niece of the police chief here at the time of the murder.

The Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killings on Wednesday quoted the state Attorney General as saying in 2001 that Gregory Thompson is incapable of making rational decisions, so a conservator was needed for the man on death row.

Thompson was convicted of using a butcher knife in 1985 to stab Brenda Blanton Lane to death in Coffee County after abducting her from the Big Springs Shopping Center parking lot across Lane Parkway from the police and sheriff's departments. He's confessed to doing so to get her car so he and his girlfriend could drive to Georgia.

"According to the attorney general and the state's own expert, Thompson is mentally ill," said Randy Tatel, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing. "People who are mentally ill should not be subject to execution."

The death penalty opponents' announcement did not surprise Barbara Brown of the Longview Community, sister of the slain reporter.

"I fully expected them to bring up the competency issue again, Brown said this morning, calling it "irrelevant and really rather ridiculous."

Brown and at least one of the lawmen who brought Thompson back from Georgia have said they don't believe Thompson was mentally ill at the time of the crime. Brown went a step further this morning.

"As I understand it, all he has to understand is that he knows he's going to be executed and why," Brown said. "I believe he knows that and has demonstrated that he understands."

Brown bases her belief on a 2004 Times-Gazette report by Dea Demonbren who quoted Thompson from a prison interview, and on information Brown received from the Victims Liaison Office of the state Attorney General's office.

Sharon Curtis-Flair, spokeswoman for Attorney General Paul Summers, this morning said the office wouldn't have anything to say about the death penalty opponents' criticism of Summers.

"We're going to argue the case in court," Curtis-Flair said. "This has been reviewed by the courts which have upheld it."

The U.S. Supreme Court overruled a lower federal court judge's decision that an Aug. 19, 2004, execution date should be stopped because an expert witness' testimony wasn't properly documented.

Thompson is now scheduled by the state Supreme Court to be executed on Feb. 7, 2006.

That and the death penalty opponents' announcement yesterday imply there may be additional pleadings in Thompson's case.

"If there is any further argument, it will take place in the courts," Curtis-Flair said. "That's all we'll have to say."

"There is no doubt that the death of 28-year-old Brenda Blanton Lane was a terrible tragedy," Tatel said. "However, our individual and collective failure to adequately acknowledge, understand and respond to the often-brutal tragedy of mental illness -- particularly severe mental illness such as Thompson suffers -- is a crime we barely comprehend."

Tatel said the standard for incompetence is different from diagnoses of even the most severe mental illness.

Tatel quoted now-former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Drowota as saying it's been shown that Thompson is mentally ill, but documents to that effect, don't raise the issue of competency.

Schizophrenia prevents Thompson from grasping the fact that the state is about to execute him, the anti execution group leader said.

He says Thompson hears voices, is often suicidal, has eaten his own feces and does not appreciate that Lane is dead or that he's about to be executed.