"James Thought The System Cared About Him"

Tonight James Earl Reed, 49, of Charleston, South Carolina, is going to die.

In 1994, Mr. Reed was released from prison, where he had served time for assault. A short time later he wanted to see his ex-girlfriend, Laurie Rego, so he went to her parents' home looking for her.

Joseph and Barbara Ann Lafayette wouldn't tell him where she was, which made him angry. He pulled out a gun and shot each of them five times, including "point-blank execution shots to their heads."

So, James Earl Reed doesn't present much of a sympathetic figure, which is often the case for people on death row. I'm sure there aren't many who are weeping his fate today. And certainly the Lafayettes need to be remembered in people's prayers.

But the case does give one at least a moment's pause.

James Earl Reed has an IQ of 77. The "normal" range is between 85 and 115, and 70 is considered to the standard for mild mental retardation, with many professionals allowing for a score of up to 75 to account for measurement error.

By that standard, Mr. Reed was two points above "qualifying" as a person with mental retardation, a designation that could possibly have spared his life.

Legally, I'm sure Mr. Reed didn't have the strongest of cases. He knew the victims. He had a diagram of the Lafayette house in his gym bag when he was arrested and his shoes matched the shoe prints left at the scene.

And to top it off, he later confessed to the police and three witnesses testified they saw him coming out of the house shortly after the shooting.

When he was declared competent to stand trial, there may have been little he could have done to prevent what is going to happen to him tonight.

But you might feel a little more at peace with today's events if he had actually had a lawyer to represent him.

Not only was Mr. Reed ruled competent to stand trial, the judge allowed him to represent himself in his own defense. The court-appointed defense lawyers argued with him passionately to not take this path, but he was insistent.

"James never quite really figured out the system he's playing with," said Joseph L. Savitz, chief appellate defender of the S.C. Office of Appellate Defense, who represented Reed during his first direct appeal.

"I think James thought the system cared about him more than it actually did."

Two points from being ruled a person with mental retardation, and on trial for his life, he was allowed to be his own lawyer.

The jury convicted him on two counts of murder after deliberating for only 30 minutes. At that point, facing the death penalty, Mr. Reed pleaded with the judge to allow a lawyer to defend him for the sentencing portion.

The judge refused. The jury sentenced him to death.

On a website run by the Canadian Coalition Against The Death Penalty, Mr. Reed pleaded for help from the public:

My name is James Earl Reed, with the SCDC number of 5041 being incarcerated upon South Carolina Death Row, here within Ridgeville S.C. at Lieber Corr. Inst. Where I am within a urgent need of help!

The big issue within this death penalty case/trial, was that I would be representing myself which I have come to find out this hasn’t been done, until I became the first! Within this state, and was told perhaps within any other state! I didn’t become my own lawyer for no type of fame nor glory! Yet to save my life period! I had the head public defender of Charleston S.C. Ashley Pennington, for his trial strategy was call reconciliation, that’s it! Not to do a effective cross-examination, to whittle down the adversary’s state evidence, which all the state evidence help’s me! So I fired both lawyers, and took my own case not knowing the law well enough to handle a death penalty trial as such, just the truth and knowing this truth it carried me through the 7 day trial without stopping it to teach me anything!

In 2003, James Earl Reed simultaneously declared his innocence, waived his right to further appeals, and asked to be executed.

In a letter to The Associated Press five years ago, Reed wrote, "I am standing upon my word that this case be dismiss [sic] or I be killed." He also said he would not ask the governor for clemency, eat a final meal or make a last statement.

He chose the electric chair over lethal injection.

"I have no idea why he would do that other than to be contrarian to the end," Savitz said.