Court
denies Workman late access to minister
An order allowing condemned inmate Philip Workman's personal minister to be
with him in the hours leading up to his execution has been reversed by a state
appeals court.
Workman filed the lawsuit two days before his scheduled March 30, 2001, execution, after Ricky Bell, warden of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, refused to allow Rev. Joseph Ingle to remain with him after 10 p.m. March 29. The execution was stayed less than an hour before it was to occur.
Workman argued that denial of his religious counsel constituted ''unusual and unreasonable punishment'' and was ''arbitrary and unfounded in law or fact.''
Davidson County Chancery Court Judge Ellen Hobbs Lyle granted Workman's request. But in an opinion filed yesterday, a three-judge panel of the Tennessee Court of Appeals in Nashville disagreed.
''We hold that (Tennessee Code) does not provide condemned prisoners a right to have their personal religious ministers present at all times leading up to their execution, nor does it require a prison warden to provide condemned prisoners with such a right,'' Judge W. Frank Crawford wrote in the opinion, in which Judges Alan E. Highers and David R. Farmer joined.
Workman was sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of a Memphis police officer.
- Associated Press
