Death row inmate missing part of brain

Attorney: Death row inmate missing part of brain
BRETT BARROUQUERE
Associated Press
Wednesday, August 1, 2012

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Kevin Wayne Dunlap's decision to plead guilty to killing three children and attacking a woman in her home near Fort Campbell caught his attorneys by surprise. Now, they think they understand why.

Defense attorneys say the former special operations soldier is missing the frontal lobe in his brain that controls impulses and decision making. The damage rendered Dunlap incompetent to plead guilty to a capital offense, defense attorney Kathleen Schmidt wrote in a brief to the Kentucky Supreme Court, which will hear arguments in Dunlap's case Aug. 16 in Frankfort.

Schmidt raised the issue of Dunlap's competency in a brief and also wrote that the motivations behind Dunlap's decision to plead guilty "are murky at best, unfathomable at their heart."

"Dunlap's behavior was perplexing from the start," Schmidt said. "In short, he was willing to plead guilty even though he did not even know for certain what he was pleading to at the time the judge conducted the plea colloquy and he admitted guilt.

What could be more impulsive?"

The judge who sentenced Dunlap to death, as well as prosecutors, say he's been examined and they found no basis for a claim of mental incompetence.

Dunlap, 40, was sentenced to death March 19, 2010. He pleaded guilty to stabbing and killing 5-year-old Ethan Frensley, 17-year-old Kayla Williams and 14-year-old Kortney Frensley when they returned home from school on Oct. 15, 2008, in Roaring Springs, near the sprawling Fort Campbell military installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee state line. Dunlap remains on Kentucky's death row at the state penitentiary in Eddyville.
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