The US state of Illinois today began an unprecedented clemency review of 142 men and women awaiting execution, starting with a condemned killer of 14 people depicted alternately as mentally retarded and as a liar waiting to kill again.
The review, previously unseen in the United States in scope and concept, is the latest venue for an increasingly heated debate over capital punishment, one fuelled by fears that the country's justice system has put innocent people on death row.
Illinois Republican Gov. George Ryan ordered a moratorium on executions more than two years ago after investigators found 13 death row inmates wrongly convicted.
According to the Death Penalty Information Centre, there have been 102 cases in 25 states since 1979 of death row convicts who were found wrongly convicted. While public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans favours capital punishment, support has been eroding.
The American Bar Association has called for a national moratorium on executions until questions can be addressed.
The first case for review is that of Leonard Kidd, twice sentenced to death, once for a 1980 Chicago arson fire that killed 10 children and then for a drug-induced stabbing frenzy that took the lives of a 9-year-old boy, two men and a woman.
Ms Sharon Hicks, representing Kidd, told the review board a recent test showed Kidd with an IQ in the high 50s. Anything below 70 is considered a finding of mental retardation. She noted that a recent US Supreme Court ruling held that mentally retarded people could not be executed.
Hick's defenders also said he had been tortured by an infamous Chicago police detective who has been accused of applying electrical shocks to the testicles and buttocks of those in custody in order to coerce a confession.
"We're not asking you to set him free," Ms Hicks said, but executing him would be "cruel and unusual punishment."
But one psychiatrist found that Kidd was faking a diminished mental capacity, an assessment with which survivors of his victims agreed.
David Elliott, spokesman for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, called the review "both historic and unprecedented," adding, "It's safe to say the whole nation and indeed the world is watching Illinois."