WASHINGTON (AP) — Although she supports the death penalty, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said a Gulf War veteran facing federal execution should be allowed to get a brain scan before President Bush decides whether the soldier should be put to death.
Decorated Army veteran Louis Jones Jr. is scheduled to die by lethal injection March 18 at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. He has exhausted appeals but has asked Bush to spare his life.
Jones, 52, has admitted to raping and killing Pvt. Tracie McBride after kidnapping her from Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo in 1995. But in his clemency petition to Bush, he blames brain damage caused by exposure to nerve gas during the Gulf War.
“He should not be executed until he has the MRI to determine if there is brain damage,” said Hutchison, a Texas Republican. MRI is an abbreviation for magnetic resonance imaging, a high-powered brain scan.
Hutchison has been a champion of research on Gulf War veterans conducted by Dr. Robert Haley, an epidemiologist with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She has secured $11 million in federal money to support his studies, including $1 million in the 2003 spending bill that Congress passed this month.