SALT LAKE CITY (AP) _ Condemned killer Elroy Tillman's execution was put on hold Tuesday when his lawyer suffered a heart attack during a clemency hearing.
Tillman, who was scheduled to die by lethal injection on June 24, will get several more months to argue his case for life in prison.
"This board wants a complete and fair hearing dealing with a man's life," said Michael Sibbett, chairman of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.
Sibbett lifted Tillman's execution date and said he would indefinitely postpone the clemency hearing after a single prosecution witness testified on Wednesday.
Tillman's appeals lawyer, Loni DeLand, was taken to LDS Hospital, where he was listed Tuesday afternoon in serious but stable condition. Doctors using a tiny camera found a collapsed heart artery, said his associate, McCaye Christianson.
"He's had a serious heart attack. His doctor says he can't return (to work) for six weeks," she said.
The turn of events threw Tillman's fate into uncertainty. Sibbett ruled that DeLand, the lead counsel who worked on Tillman's appeals for 16 years, was unable to represent the convicted ax murder. So he stayed the execution, which will send prosecutors back to court to get another death warrant, and postponed the clemency hearing.
Sibbett scheduled a brief Wednesday session for the convenience of Tillman's former girlfriend, Lori Groneman, a prosecution witness at his 1983 trial who has traveled a long distance to appear at the clemency hearing.
Tillman was convicted of using an ax to kill Mark Schoenfeld, who had been dating Groneman.
"Obviously, we don't want this to continue forever, but Mr. Tillman is entitled to a full hearing," assistant Utah Attorney General Thomas Brunker said.
Lawyers for both sides will hold a conference with the pardons board on June 25 on a schedule that resumes the clemency hearing.
Brunker said he also will file for a new death warrant, but that could take several months. After he applies for the warrant, 3rd District Judge Leslie Lewis will have 45 days to schedule a hearing on the request.
Lewis can schedule the execution for up to 60 days after that, and she typically gives the condemned the full two months.
Tuesday's interruption came barely an hour after DeLand began questioning his first witness on the first day of a three-day clemency hearing.
He asked the pardons board for a midmorning recess and excused himself. It turned out to be anything but routine when DeLand, wearing an oxygen mask, was taken out of front lobby of the courthouse on a stretcher to an ambulance.
DeLand was questioning Michael Christiansen, the prosecutor who won the death penalty conviction against Tillman.
DeLand challenged Christiansen on why polygraph results and transcripts of police interviews were not turned over to the defense before Tillman's trial.
"These transcripts never saw the light of day until a few weeks ago," DeLand said.
DeLand contends Tillman's accomplice, Carla Sagers, flunked the lie detector tests, gave police inconsistent accounts of the murder and may have wielded the ax herself.
Sagers was given full immunity by Christiansen for her crucial testimony against Tillman during the 1983 trial.
Christiansen, a deputy Salt Lake County district attorney, said he did not have written polygraph results or the transcripts before the trial began. He could not offer an explanation for their absence from an investigative file.
In his opening remarks, DeLand contended Tillman's death sentence was unusual for a crime of passion. He also planned to show evidence that the death penalty is unfairly applied to racial minorities like Tillman, who is black.
Tillman's wife, Doris, who traveled from Los Angeles to observe the clemency hearing, said Tillman's trial was unfair and sentence too harsh.
"I think he was railroaded," she said.
DeLand and Christiansen traded sharp exchanges over the nature and police theories of the crime, the credibility of Sagers and the missing documents.
Christiansen contended the killing was not a crime of passion deserving of any mercy.
"I think this was just out-and-out meanness on Mr. Tillman's part," Christiansen said.
A shackled Tillman looked on from a defense table.
Christiansen also disputed the skepticism of a police lieutenant who, according to DeLand, thinks Sagers had a hand in the murder and was lying about it.
"I wouldn't have hesitated for a minute to prosecute Ms. Sagers if I thought she was lying," he said.
(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
APTV 06-12-01 1541MDT
