Inmate's Execution Still Set for Tonight

"There's nothing that registers with him. He simply does not know that this will mean the end of his physical life," Givens said.

Psychological experts on both sides agree about Walton's mental state. But in March, the appeals court affirmed a three-year-old lower federal court ruling that Walton's mental condition does not interfere with his ability to comprehend that his death sentence is punishment for three killings in 1996.

The 7 to 6 decision forced Walton's attorneys last month to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take up Walton's case and to file a clemency petition asking Kaine to commute his sentence to life in prison.

Walton's scheduled execution would be the second test this year of Kaine's public resolve to uphold the death penalty despite his stated personal opposition to capital punishment. In April, Kaine, a Catholic who as a young private lawyer defended two death-row inmates, allowed the execution of Dexter Lee Vinson to go forward.

Walton pleaded guilty in 1997 to shooting Jessie and Elizabeth Kendrick, an elderly Danville couple, and later killing his neighbor, Archie Moore, stuffing his body in a closet and sprinkling it with cologne. No competency hearing was held before the death sentence was issued.

Barbara K. Case, the Kendricks' daughter, says she has forgiven Walton. Raised Catholic and now a Baptist who lives in Mississippi, Case said she grieved deeply for her parents but was taught to believe the death penalty is wrong.

"If right now he is insane and he doesn't know right from wrong and he doesn't know diddly squat, what purpose would it serve? I'd get no satisfaction out of watching him die," Case said.

The Supreme Court ruled in Ford v. Wainwright in 1986 that it is unconstitutional to execute the insane. More recently, the high court prohibited the execution of the mentally retarded but left it up to the states to define retardation.

Legal experts say more recent lower court decisions on cases such as Walton's have eroded the force of Ford v. Wainwright , reducing the pool of death-row inmates who might be considered under the decision and trivializing the meaning of mental illness. Richard J. Bonnie, director of the University of Virginia's Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, said the appeals court's March decision on Walton's appeal undermines the fundamental principle of capital punishment as retribution.

"Putting a mad dog to sleep that is dangerous is not punishment," Bonnie said. "What we have to understand is that the death penalty is meant to be an example of personal responsibility through punishment. What that requires is that the subject of the punishment understand why he is being punished."