On Monday, more than a dozen conservative leaders, including former Virginia Attorneys General Ken Cuccinelli and Mark Earley, both Republicans like Perry, joined in the effort to spare Panetti’s life, according to the website ConservativeHQ.com.

Reached by telephone Monday, Cuccinelli said, “This just strikes me as a rather ripe case for commutation of a sentence based on a defendant’s mental illness and mental capacity.”

“He was demonstrably mentally ill long before the crime occurred,” he said. “That’s a person that I would hope most Americans don’t think should be put to death. But whether most Americans do or not, I signed the letter because I don’t.”

Cuccinelli said he does not intend to minimize the crimes.

“You have people who were killed,” he said. “It’s one of the hardest things governors have to face in states with the death penalty.”

Panetti’s lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to halt his lethal injection and determine whether mentally ill people should be exempt from the death penalty because it is unconstitutionally cruel punishment, The Associated Press reported.

Panetti is one of a dozen people with execution dates set in Texas, which has executed more than 500 since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to resume in 1976, the highest total in the country. Virginia has conducted 110 executions during the same period.

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