Dale Leo Bishop is scheduled to be executed in Mississippi tomorrow at 6pm. This would be a travesty. Please help stop it...
(read on)
Here is the kicker:
Dale Leo Bishop didn’t commit murder.
The state of Mississippi admits that he didn’t commit murder despite its conviction of him.
And yet he’s scheduled to be executed for murder on July 23rd.
Bishop is guilty of involuntary manslaughter, but the state of Mississippi doesn’t care.
Goherefor the full story...
Here is the salient section:
After the trial, Bishop changed his mind and appealed the verdict. His case was handled by the state's Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, set up in 2000 to help indigent death row prisoners. Here the case took a curious turn. As the Jackson Free Press reports:
Bishop’s lawyers accuse Robert Ryan, former director of the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel...with "extreme dereliction of duty" in Ryan’s failure to present mitigating evidence in Bishop’s appeal. The brief includes affidavits supporting the defense’s allegations that Ryan deliberately suppressed his own staff’s investigation, which revealed Bishop’s life-long mental illness, and summarily dismissed the volunteers working on the case.
"The director simply discarded this proof and substituted his own unsubstantiated and frivolous allegations (with the appeal). All the while, Bishop himself had no idea his lead lawyer was sabotaging his main chance to escape execution," the lawyers wrote.
"I don’t really know if Ryan was overworked or in over his head," [James] Craig said... "but whatever the reason is for his lack of performance, it’s just another situation where the quality of justice you get is dependent on whether you have any money. That’s been such a theme for Dale Bishop, because his mother tried to have him taken for (psychiatric evaluation and treatment). They quoted her a price and she couldn’t possibly afford it. This was a situation that probably could have been avoided if somebody would have intervened in (Bishop’s) life."
Even the Mississippi Clarion Ledger, not exactly the most liberal newspaper in the nation, opposes this execution.
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW!!
Please help stay this execution by contacting Governor Haley Barbour IMMEDIATELY at:
PHONE: (601) 359-3150
FAX: (601) 359-3741
EMAIL: governor@governor.state.ms.us
Also, contact the Clarion-Ledger and express your opposition to this state sanctioned murder:
Larry Whitaker, President and Publisher: (601) 961-7201
Ronnie Agnew, Executive editor: (601) 961-7175
Be sure to vote "no" in their front page poll.
Finally, and IMPORTANTLY, forward this message to as many people as you can and URGE THEM TO ACT!
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. PLEASE HELP.