MAYS' LIFE HANGS ON DEBATE OVER MARIJUANA USE

RALEIGH -- Hoping to spare their client's life, defense attorneys presented
testimony Tuesday that Kawame Mays is brain-damaged from smoking marijuana
and was under its influence the day he killed two people last year.

For a full day in the sentencing hearing, the focus was on the young New
York man's background. Jurors, who convicted him Friday of the first-degree
murder of Michael Walker, will deliberate today on whether to sentence him
to death or life in prison.

Jurors deadlocked last week over whether Mays committed first-degree murder
in the killing of Raleigh police Detective Paul Hale, so the judge declared
a mistrial. No date has been set for retrying that case, which will be heard
by a different jury.

As the sentencing proceeding opened, Mays' attorneys called relatives,
school officials, psychologists and an academic in their effort to convince
the jury of factors that would mitigate against the death penalty.

The lawyers hope jurors see him more sympathetically when they consider not
only his marijuana use but also his learning disabilities and what the
defense witnesses said was a troubled childhood.

The marijuana testimony came from Antonio Puente, a UNC-Wilmington professor
who also works in a private clinic and specializes in neuropsychology. He
said Mays told him that he had been smoking an average of an ounce of
marijuana daily since he was about 12 years old.

Puente said Mays had been smoking the drug during most of his waking hours.
That, along with his learning disabilities and other psychological problems,
would make Mays brain-damaged, Puente said. In fact, a toxicology report
showed that a urine sample taken about an hour after he killed Hale -- and
about 13 hours after killing Walker -- indicated that Mays had marijuana in
his system that was 2 1/2 times the amount that would normally cause impairment.

District Attorney Colon Willoughby objected strongly to Puente's testimony
and cross-examined him with a contentiousness he hadn't displayed during the
trial.

"Is it your opinion that if you smoke enough marijuana you can't tell if it
is right or wrong to shoot someone?" Willoughby asked.

Puente said it would have interfered with Mays' ability to make split-second
decisions.

A principal and a counselor at the special-education school Mays attended in
New York City from 1992 to 1994, however, acknowledged in cross-examination
that, in almost daily conversation with him, they never detected that he was
under the influence of any drug. Mays' attorneys had called the two to the
stand to bolster their contention that Mays had a troubled childhood.

Tuesday's testimony outlined Mays' life, starting with his birth to an unwed
15-year-old who gave him up for adoption. He spent the first year of his
life in a foster home, where the foster mother never hugged her foster
children because she didn't want to become attached to them.

After six miscarriages and a stillbirth, Lemard and Guelda Mays adopted the
baby and brought him home to their solid middle-class neighborhood in
Queens, N.Y. But his parents found they had an infant who violently banged
his head against his crib. He began having problems in school and eventually
was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder.

Psychologists and school officials testified that Mays did not have a good
relationship with his father, who they said was distant and authoritarian.
Lemard Mays bowed and rubbed his face and appeared to struggle for composure
during the uncomfortable testimony.

Guelda Mays also fought back tears as she testified about their efforts to
get their son all the help he needed. She and other relatives said they
visited a remorseful Mays in jail in January.

"He cried and kept repeating over and over, 'I can't believe what happened
to my life,' and he kept saying he was sorry," his aunt, Sonya Clark,
testified. Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens would not allow jurors to
hear the testimony of UNC-Chapel Hill sociology professor James H. Johnson,
who has national credentials studying the problems of young black men.
Johnson has testified in numerous death-penalty cases about how murderers
from disadvantaged backgrounds can blame some of their actions on societal
forces beyond their control.

Johnson testified recently in the Fayetteville trial of Kevin and Tilmon
Golphin, who were convicted of killing a state trooper and a sheriff's
deputy. Stephens said Johnson's opinion was no more valid than anyone else's.

Jurors begin deliberating Mays' fate this morning after hearing closing
arguments.

Craig Jarvis can be reached at 829-4576 or cjarvis@nando.com

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett