By Karen Ingram
The US state of Oklahoma executed Sean Sellers on February 4. He had been on death row since 1986, when he was convicted for the murders of his mother and stepfather. Sellers was 16 years old when he committed the crimes.
After staying awake for three days taking speed and marijuana, he awoke from a short sleep and shot the couple in bed as they slept.
At his trial, a psychiatrist testified that Sellers was either insane (not knowing the difference between right and wrong) or "legally unconscious".
However, the state prosecutor convinced the jury that, although Sellers was just 16 at the time, he acted as a lucid and cold-blooded adult. The jury was not advised that Sellers' age at the time of the crime was a mitigating circumstance.
The Canberra office of Amnesty International (AI) contacted the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, one hour before the execution was due to take place.
When asked if Sellers had any chance of clemency being granted in the hour prior to the execution, the warden answered, "Mr Sellers will not be pardoned, and the execution will proceed in one hour".
About 20 members of Amnesty International and others held a rally outside the US embassy on the day of the execution, to protest against the killing of Sellers and to call for the US government to abandon the death penalty.
Canberra regional co-ordinator of AI, Alison Sexton-Green, handed a letter from AI's national director, Kate Gilmore, to embassy staff for the US ambassador. The letter reminded the ambassador of his country's obligations under international human rights treaties, and quoted President Clinton's executive order, issued on December 10, the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which stated, "It shall be the policy and practice of the Government of the United States, being committed to the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, fully to respect and implement its obligations to which it is a party".
Gilmore asked: "How is the international community to interpret these words when ... some 720 juvenile offenders await the same fate that Sean Sellers is now facing?".
When the US government ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1992, it reserved the right to ignore Article 6(5), which forbids the use of the death penalty against children. The US is one of only two countries in the world (the other is the collapsed state of Somalia) which has not yet ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Not only was Sean Sellers a child at the time he committed the crimes for which he was killed, but evidence gathered since his 1986 trial demonstrates that Sellers had brain damage as the result of violent treatment at the hands of his parents while still a child.
The evidence concerning his mental condition was not regarded as "newly discovered" and not admitted at subsequent appeals. Appeals panels were not allowed to hear evidence about Sellers' abusive childhood, or the extreme violence in which he grew up.
AI faxed Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating's office and other officials to try to encourage the state to reconsider killing Sean Sellers. They could not swayed. The governor has said on numerous occasions, "No murderer will receive clemency while I am in office".
Had the governor and the Oklahoma justice system given Sellers a fair right of appeal and considered all evidence regarding his mental state when he committed the killings, it is likely Sellers would be alive today.
AI has launched a campaign against the death penalty in the US, which will culminate on July 4, US independence day. For more information, phone Maya Catsanis on (02) 9217 7640.
[Karen Ingram is active in Canberra Amnesty International.]