ARKANSAS
Eric Randall Nance
November 28, 2005
Eric Randall Nance, a white man, faces execution Nov. 28, 2005 for the 1993 death of 18-year-old Julie Heath. Nance picked Heath up where her car had broken down on the side of the highway between Malvern and Hot Springs counties. He then reportedly attempted to rape Heath and stabbed her. A hunter found her body in the woods a week later.
During trial Heath’s mother was allowed to testify that she thought Nance deserved the death penalty. Nance’s trial counsel did not object. According to appellate courts, counsel’s failure to object may have been part of counsel’s overall defense strategy. The Supreme Court of Arkansas explained that there is a “strong presumption in favor of counsel’s effectiveness.” Death penalty cases are notorious for the ineffective assistance of counsel that defendants suffer. Therefore it is terrifying that there is a “strong presumption in favor of counsel” in these cases in Arkansas.
The death penalty is a cruel, unusual, inhuman, and archaic form of punishment. The death penalty is costly both monetarily and because of the effect on society of allowing state-sanctioned death. Evidence of the death penalty’s deterrence effect is inconclusive at best.
Please write Gov. Mike Huckabee requesting that Eric Randall Nance’s sentence be commuted to life in prison.
