Inmate is ruled too mentally ill to be executed

Penalty can serve no purpose, judge says

By: JournalNow Staff | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 02, 2008

ALBEMARLE

An inmate on death row who wore a Superman shirt and represented himself at trial is too mentally ill to be executed, a judge has ruled.

Judge Robert Bell of Stanly County Superior Court ruled that Guy LeGrande, 49, was "not competent to be executed" because he is psychotic and delusional, according to a ruling signed Friday but released yesterday.

LeGrande was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1993 shooting death of Ellen Munford in a murder-for-hire plot.

"The court has finally stepped in and halted a colossal miscarriage of justice -- the execution of a seriously mentally ill man," defense attorney Jay Ferguson said.

District Attorney Michael Parker, who didn't try the original case, said he hadn't received a copy of the ruling and couldn't comment. The N.C. Attorney General's Office said it was reviewing the decision.

The ruling came nearly a year after the last hearing in LeGrande's case was held. His execution is stayed until the state decides whether to appeal, and the murder conviction is not affected by the judge's decision.

The judge said that LeGrande refuses to cooperate with his defense attorneys, Ferguson and James Monroe, even to the point of sitting apart from them in court.

"The gross delusions stemming from Mr. LeGrande's severe mental disorder puts an awareness of a link between his crime and its punishment in a context so far removed from reality that the punishment can serve no purpose," the judge wrote in his 10-page order.

LeGrande's defense lawyers said that their client also claimed to communicate with television star Oprah Winfrey through the television. LeGrande also believed that he was getting a pardon and a financial settlement from the state.

Trial transcripts showed that LeGrande cursed the jury and said he would meet them in hell. At one point, he told them to "pull the damn switch and shake that groove thing."

LeGrande had been scheduled to be executed Dec. 1, 2006, but the execution was stopped to review his mental state.