HOUSTON — Barring an unexpected reprieve, James Blake Colburn will be executed Wednesday for the 1994 strangulation and stabbing death of Peggy Murphy.
He admitted he committed the murder, just as prosecutors admitted the other salient point in the case, that Colburn is severely mentally ill.
Psychiatrists first detected Colburn’s condition, later diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia, when he was 14. At 17, he was raped. He soon began hearing voices and suffering delusions. He told his mother he saw a devil slither out of his stomach. Often, his medical records show, the voices told him to kill himself or his family. He has tried to commit suicide at least 15 times.
The unsettled question in Colburn’s case — one upon which his life hangs — is whether it matters that he dozed through his own murder trial because he was so heavily medicated with antipsychotic drugs. His lawyers argue that the trial was unconstitutional, because his condition rendered him incompetent to stand trial or to help in his defense. The federal appeals courts, so far, have disagreed, and the issue is now before the Supreme Court.
“On a number of levels, it’s wrong to execute him,” said Philip H. Hilder, one of Colburn’s lawyers.
“He wasn’t competent to stand trial. He wasn’t aware of what was transpiring because he was so heavily medicated.”
In many ways, Colburn, 42, offers a typical example of how a mentally ill person becomes a violent criminal.
Since childhood, Colburn has been treated in mental health programs, halfway houses and support groups. Records show that as an adult, Colburn often tried to check himself into public health crisis units because of suicidal thoughts or an inability to cope.
Often, he wound up discharged with a bottle of pills. He was voted out of one support group because he tried to kill himself. One neighbor in the apartment complex where Murphy was murdered recalled that Colburn could be heard banging his head against the walls, apparently trying to quiet the furies inside his head.
Peggy Murphy, 55, was murdered on June 26, 1994, in Conroe, a small town about 40 miles north of Houston. Prosecutors say Colburn invited her into his apartment for a drink. He attempted to rape her, and when she resisted, he strangled her and stabbed her with a steak knife. He then asked a neighbor to call the police.
One juror said Colburn’s lack of emotion during the trial convinced her he was mean and uncaring, not insane. That juror, Kimberly Queener, who said she would not again vote for the death penalty, said the jury did not realize that Colburn’s demeanor could be explained by chronic schizophrenia.
“Had I been informed at trial that Colburn’s appearance on tape and in court was due to his disease,” Queener said in an affidavit, “I would have formed an entirely different opinion of him.”