Mentally-challenged US man faces execution today

A mentally-challenged man is to be put to death in the US state of Georgia Tuesday, despite protests from human rights activists and mental health advocates calling the execution a miscarriage of justice.

Warren Hill, a 52-year-old African American, is reported to have an IQ of 70, putting him below the threshold for mental disability.

"There is no dispute among the experts that Hill is mentally retarded," attorney Brian Kammer wrote in an appeal seeking leniency. "... Hill's execution would be a fundamental miscarriage of justice. The court must stay Hill's imminent execution and vacate death sentence."

After spending the last 21 years on death row for killing a fellow inmate, Hill was scheduled to die last July. However, the execution was put on hold for several months due to a change in how the killing was to be carried out — Hill is to be the first in the state to receive a single deadly dose of pentobarbital, instead of the previously standard three-drug lethal cocktail.

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