Warren Hill granted stay of execution 30 minutes before lethal injection

30 minutes before Warren Hill, 53, was scheduled to be executed, a call was made in which the federal appeals court for the 11th circuit granted him a stay of execution.

Hill is an intellectually disabled prisoner in Georgia, and a 2002 ruling of the Supreme Court makes the execution of the “mentally disabled” unconstitutional.

According to The Guardian Georgia is the only state that demands that an inmate must prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that they are mentally disabled.

According to Hill’s lawyer, Brian Kammer, that should not be difficult because, "All the doctors who have examined Mr. Hill are unanimous in their diagnosis of mental retardation.”

Experts who examined Hill back in 2000 originally said that he was not mentally disabled, but the changes in criteria over the last 13 years have led them to change their opinion on his mental health.

Kammer used these changes as a final effort to get his client a stay of execution, and it worked.

AJC reports that Hill was originally incarcerated for the murder of his 18-year-old girlfriend back in 1986. He received the death penalty after he killed Joseph Handspike, another inmate. He beat Handspike with a nail-studded-board.