Texas

Governor rejects stay for mentally ill killer

A mentally ill killer was executed Tuesday evening after Gov. Rick Perry rejected a highly unusual parole board recommendation to commute the inmate’s death sentence or delay the lethal injection.

Kelsey Patterson, 50, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, was condemned for a double slaying almost 12 years ago. His lethal injection has renewed the legal quandary of whether it is proper to execute someone who is mentally ill when the Supreme Court says it is unconstitutional to execute someone who is mentally retarded.

In a 5-1 vote, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles endorsed a petition from Patterson’s lawyers and supporters that he be spared. Texas resumed carrying out executions in 1982, and Monday marked the first time at this late stage in a condemned inmate’s case the panel recommended the governor commute a death sentence.

Washington, D.C.

Task force formed for Great Lakes cleanup

President Bush on Tuesday named a 10-member Cabinet-level task force, chaired by Environmental Protection Agency chief Mike Leavitt, to coordinate Great Lakes cleanup efforts among states, federal agencies and Canada.

The General Accounting Office found last year that 33 federal and 17 state programs have spent more than $1.7 billion on environmental restoration of the Great Lakes. However, the efforts were uncoordinated and the results difficult to measure, the GAO said.

Bush directed the task force to form a working group including representatives from each federal agency that handles Great Lakes issues. The task force must submit a report by May 31, 2005.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., said a Great Lakes cleanup needed a commitment of money, not another report.

Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, called Bush’s order “an encouraging step forward” but also said that a successful cleanup effort also required substantial additional funding.

Baltimore

University bugged by cicada hoax

The buzz began last week, when word spread that Johns Hopkins University was paying $100 — or maybe even $1,000 — for rare blue-eyed cicadas.

Scores of callers hoping to cash in on their oddball bugs started ringing up the university’s biology department soon after the normally red-eyed insects began emerging from the ground.

Alas, it’s a hoax.

“We tell them as far as we know, no one is offering to buy blue-eyed cicadas,” said Cindy Holstein, the department’s administrator.

But that hasn’t stopped the calls. “It’s constant,” she said. “You hang up the phone, and you hear another one.”

No one at Hopkins today is studying cicadas. The biology department doesn’t even have an entomologist.