Govt urged to intervene to save death row man
The Government has been asked to intervene immediately in the case of a black man on death row for 28 years in the US.
Roger Collins, aged 46, who suffers from an intellectual disability, is under a death sentence in a Georgia prison for killing his girlfriend in 1977.
Irish supporter Billy Colbert today called on Foreign Affairs Minister and special UN envoy Dermot Ahern and EU Ambassador to Washington John Bruton to use their influence to commute Mr Collins’ sentence.
Mr Colbert, a former soldier from Portlaoise, also asked the Oireachtas Sub-Committee on Human Rights to write to the State Governor of Georgia on the issue.
“Not to do something would be an insult to him and his family. He is totally in limbo. He is the second-longest prisoner on death row in the state of Georgia,” he said.
In the mid-1990s, Mr Colbert became penpals with Mr Collins who was illiterate when he was convicted but has since taught himself to read and write in prison.
Mr Colbert said today that Mr Collins has received five premature “death calls” when he would be prepared to go to the electric chair.
“This type of barbaric treatment amounts to nothing less than torture,” he said.
Committee chairman Senator Paul Bradford asked “where in that awful conveyor belt” was Mr Collin’s death sentence now listed.
Mr Colbert replied that he believed that the authorities “wanted him to fade away so they wouldn’t have to execute him”.
Mr Collins, who denies killing his girlfriend, is currently in poor health after recently undergoing eye surgery, the committee heard.
Mr Bradford agreed that the committee would make written representations to Mr Collins’ lawyers and also send a “strongly-worded letter” to the State Governor.
In addition, Mr Bradford said he will look at a mechanism that will allow a committee member to visit Mr Collins in prison.
Mr Colbert said that Ireland and EU countries all had a role to educate others on the futility of the death penalty as a form of criminal punishment.
The former Defence Forces officer, who has visited Mr Collins several times, is due to visit him again in October.
Irish people removed all references to the death penalty in the Irish Constitution by referendum in June 2001.
The last occasion on which a state execution took place in this country was in 1954.
