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LEONORA LaPETERTime was it didn't matter if inmates invited death or fought it, they spent a dozen years in prison. Paul Hill's case shows a shift.
ST. PETERSBURG - If Paul Hill is executed next week, he will be the fourth death row inmate in less than a year to go without a fight.
Hill, the antiabortion activist who killed an abortion doctor and his escort outside a Pensacola clinic in 1994, fired his lawyers and rejected all appeals.
In death row parlance, he is "a volunteer."
That makes it unlikely the execution will be stopped, legal experts said, even though his time on death row is below average and Gov. Jeb Bush just signed Hill's first death warrant July 9. And even though one of Hill's former lawyers on Tuesday sought to stop the execution.
"We're in a different climate than we were 10 years ago," said Roger Maas, executive director of the Commission on Capital Cases in Tallahassee, the state agency that represents condemned prisoners. "The death penalty law is pretty settled. So now the courts are looking specifically at a case."
Hill, 49, has not undergone the last-ditch legal efforts most death row inmates seek. A 2002 federal court decision makes it unlikely state defense lawyers will do anything.
Hill's former private lawyer, Michael Hirsh of Kennesaw, Ga., filed a motion with the Florida Supreme Court late Tuesday to halt the execution.
Hirsh, former director of Operation Rescue in Atlanta, was fired as an attorney for Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice in 1994 for supporting Hill. He is considered the father of the "justifiable homicide" defense, which says killing abortion doctors is justified if it is necessary to prevent the death of an unborn child.
Hirsh's motion focuses on Hill's sentencing. A federal judge sentenced Hill to life in prison for violating a federal law that prohibits anyone from using force, threats or physical obstruction to stop an abortion. Later, a state judge sentenced Hill to death for murder after a separate trial.
Hill should serve his death sentence after his life sentence, Hirsh argues. He also says Hill was not given a fair trial because he didn't know what he was getting into when he chose to represent himself.
Hirsh maintains that he and a lawyer from Connecticut still represent Hill, having never been "relieved of their duties" when they represented him in his automatic appeal seven years ago.
But the Rev. Donald Spitz, Hill's spiritual adviser who visited him on death row in Starke Tuesday, said Hill knew nothing of Hirsh's motions.
Lawyers have asked Hill before to embrace the same argument about the sentences and he has rejected the argument each time, said Spitz, director of Pro-Life Virginia.
"He's not resisting his death . . . for the same reason Jesus Christ didn't resist being put to death," Spitz said. "God has ordained this to happen to him and he's not resisting."
Hill must agree to have Hirsh represent him for the stay to be valid, said Carolyn Snurkowski, assistant deputy attorney general. "His personal right doesn't belong to anyone else. He would have to agree to it," she said.
The courts hesitate to allow lawyers to intervene on behalf of clients who don't want them to, especially when they don't tell the inmates about their appeals.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled last year that a defense lawyer working for the state should not have intervened without an inmate's permission.
Rigoberto Sanchez-Velasco had raped and killed an 11-year-old girl and later killed two inmates on death row. He wanted to be executed because he said he couldn't stop killing, but lawyers kept filing appeals challenging his mental competency. He was examined by a dozen psychiatrists when an attorney sought to stop his execution again.
In denying the appeal, the 11th Circuit ruled that the lawyer, Todd Scher, "has not established that he is dedicated to Sanchez-Velasco's interests. To the contrary, he appears to be pursuing his own interests in opposing the imposition of the death penalty."
Scher declined to comment.
Experts say there might be more volunteers like Hill because death row inmates now can choose lethal injection, a less painful means of death.
Three of the last five inmates executed on death row wanted to be put to death. But they were not executed any faster than those who fought.
Serial killer Aileen Wuornos spent almost 11 years on death row; Newton C. Slawson, a Plant City laborer who carved an 8-month-old fetus from a woman and then shot her, her husband and two children, had spent 13 years on death row; Sanchez-Velasco had spent 14 years on death row when he died Oct. 2, 2002.
Twelve years is the average stay on death row.
Neil A. Dupree, who oversees state lawyers who represent condemned prisoners, expects it to take only two to three years for volunteers to be executed.
That might be tested with death row inmate John Blackwelder.
In May 2000, Blackwelder strangled a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution. On July 14, Blackwelder filed a motion to stop all future appeals and dismiss his lawyers.
-Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.