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A federal judge has suspended the death sentence of former Hancock County resident James Billiot, who murdered family members with a sledgehammer on Thanksgiving Day in 1981.
U.S. District Judge Tom Lee ordered state officials to transfer Billiot within 60 days to Mississippi State Hospital, the mental hospital at Whitfield, because he is incompetent to be executed.
“Failure to do so,” the written entry in the court record said, “will result in the issuance of a writ for Billiot’s immediate release.”
Billiot, a former mental patient, was sentenced to death in December 1982 for murdering stepfather, 53-year-old Wallace Croll Jr., with an 8-pound sledgehammer.
Also killed were Billiot’s mother, 53-year-old Audrey Croll, and stepsister, Cheryl Ann Croll, 14.
Billiott failed to convince a judge that he should be acquitted because he was insane when the murders were committed at the family’s Leetown home.
Over the years, he has filed numerous appeals of his conviction and execution.
Billiot has previously been diagnosed as schizophrenic.
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