New Albany man seeks clemency as execution date nears

MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. -- Lawyers for a New Albany man facing execution next week for killing a state trooper, filed a motion Monday seeking a stay of execution while he asked the state Parole Board to recommend his life be spared on the grounds he's innocent.\n"I've never had a chance to prove my innocence," Norman Timberlake told the Parole Board.\nTimberlake told the board he was convicted on perjured testimony and has never been given the chance to show he didn't kill Master Trooper Michael E. Greene during a routine traffic stop on Feb. 5, 1993.\nTimberlake said he was frustrated by the fact his appeals have always centered on his mental health, not his innocence.\nHis attorneys on Monday filed a supplemental motion in support of a stay of execution contending Timberlake's execution should be blocked until the Supreme Court decides a Texas case it agreed last week to hear.\nLawyers for Scott Louis Panetti, a suspect in a similar case who killed his estranged wife's parents in 1992, said Panetti has suffered from severe mental illness for 25 years and should be spared the death penalty.\n"Right now Indiana is interpreting the competency to be executed law as meaning as long as you can answer the questions of: 'Are you going to be executed and why?' then you're competent," said Lorinda Youngcourt, an attorney for Timberlake who attended the clemency hearing.\nTimberlake has been diagnosed as suffering from chronic paranoid schizophrenia, Youngcourt said.\nDuring the clemency hearing at the Indiana State Prison, Timberlake said he's been hearing voices since 1997 from someone who identifies himself as Satan.\n"They were threatening my granddaughters and my daughter," he said.\nHe also told the Parole Board he believes he is under the control of a machine.\n"He believes the machine is controlling him, controlling the court, controlling the jurors, controlling everybody," Youngcourt said.\nTimberlake said during the hearing that it made no sense for him to kill Greene because he had been told he was free to leave and he hardly knew the man with him, Tom McElroy, who Timberlake contends killed Greene.\n"I didn't even like the guy. He was a braggart -- a wannabe bully, and stuff like this," Timberlake said. "I didn't have no reason to help this guy whatsoever."\nTimberlake told the parole board that Greene stopped to question him and McElroy along Interstate 65 on the northwest side of Indianapolis because he saw McElroy urinating. Timberlake said Greene told him he was free to go but began handcuffing McElroy.\nTimberlake said he had a hangover and was sitting on the hood of the car looking at ants in the gravel when he heard a scuffle and a "pop." He then saw McElroy standing over Greene.\n"I didn't do the murder," he said.\nTimberlake continued to say he wasn't guilty even though parole board chairman Christopher Meloy told him it wasn't the panel's job to retry the facts of the case.\nMcElroy was convicted of assisting a criminal because he failed to call police immediately after the shooting. He was sentenced to four years in prison and testified against Timberlake. Parole board members said McElroy is believed to be dead.\nTimberlake was scheduled to die by chemical injection in the early hours of Jan. 19. The clemency hearing is scheduled to continue Jan. 16 in Indianapolis before making a recommendation to Gov. Mitch Daniels.