Death Row Inmate's Lawyer To Appeal To US Supreme Court

STARKE (CBSMiami/AP) - The attorney for John Errol Ferguson, a current inmate on death row for the murder of several people, said that he will ask U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

Ferguson's attorney Christopher Handman, on Tuesday, wrote in an email to The Associated Press that Ferguson has a "documented history of severe mental illness" and shouldn't be executed.

Ferguson, 65, is set to die by lethal injection on August 5^th. He was convicted of killing eight people in South Florida. Six victims died in a drug related, execution-style mass killing in Carol City in 1977. Six months later, Ferguson abducted and killed two Hialeah teenagers in 1978.

Governor Rick Scott originally postponed the execution to allow psychiatrists to again examine Ferguson, who has a long history of paranoid schizophrenia, but announced Tuesday the new execution date for the inmate.

Scott initially signed Ferguson's death warrant last fall, scheduling him to die Oct. 16. But appeals at the state and federal level kept the execution from moving forward.

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