Abu-Ali Abdur
Tennessee is scheduled to execute Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman June 18 for the 1986 murder of Patrick Daniels in Davidson County. Abdur’Rahman, an African American male, received exceptionally poor legal representation at his trial, and problems concerning possible innocence, mental illness, prosecutorial misconduct, and racial discrimination continue to surround his death sentence.
At the sentencing phase of Abdur’Rahman’s trial, his attorneys failed to present available mitigating evidence, namely the violent abuse he suffered as a child, which likely would have changed the jury’s sentencing decision. His father beat him with a baseball bat, and used various forms of torture as disciplinary tactics. These included stripping the young boy and tying him up, locking him in a cupboard, and forcing him to eat a pack of cigarettes. When Abdur’Rahman vomited after eating the cigarettes, his father made him eat the vomit. As a result of his upbringing, Abdur’Rahman developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and he has shown serious symptoms of mental illness, including Dissociative Disorder. During the appeals process, eight of the jurors who sentenced him to death expressed doubts over whether they would have voted for the death penalty if the defense had presented any or all of the available mitigating evidence at trial.
Furthermore, there is strong reason to believe that Abdur’Rahman, although present at the crime scene, was not the assailant in the murder for which he was sentenced to death.
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