By admin 
Last year, The Herald exclusively reported that South Carolina death row inmate James Robertson wrote a letter to a judge saying he wanted to drop his appeals and be executed for murdering his parents 29 years ago in Rock Hill.
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Then this summer Robertson, known as Jimmy, penned another letter stating if he got the medications he used to be on, he wanted to withdraw that decision to die in the electric chair, by firing squad, or by lethal injection.
There were secret closed hearings and filings in federal court in Charleston about his mental health that were not open to the public under a judge’s order.
Now Robertson has filed a lawsuit against three top officials at the S.C. Department of Corrections, claiming that not giving him those drugs and providing him with a stable mental health counselor is “cruel and unusual punishment.” Robertson wants a federal judge to order that he get adequate mental health treatment for his “psychiatric illness,” including counselors and the drugs he once took.
The federal lawsuit filed in South Carolina U.S. District Court names as defendants the state’s prisons director Joel Anderson, Lydell Chestnut, the director of the Broad River prison in Columbia that houses death row, and the prison system’s chief of psychiatry Andrew Hedgepath.
What the federal lawsuit claims
Robertson claims in the suit that his Constitutional rights have been violated. The lawsuit claims the defendants “have engaged in acts or omissions that reflect a deliberate indifference to Robertson’s critical medical condition by denying Robertson timely and appropriate treatment for known and well-documented significant psychiatric illness. As a result, Robertson suffers from deteriorating mental health that has caused him to take actions which harm his material interests and threaten to cause Robertson to suffer permanent injury.”
The lawsuit demands a federal judge restore Robertson’s “continued and regular access to mental health counselors with whom he can form long-term relationships,” and two treatment drugs he had been on before the prison system changed what drugs were available to inmates.
Who is Rock Hill’s James ‘Jimmy’ Robertson?
Robertson, 52, was convicted of two counts of murder, armed robbery and financial card fraud. He was sentenced to death in a 1999 York County trial that was broadcast live on Court TV after the killings over Thanksgiving weekend in 1997.
The murders by a former Boy Scout and star student from a wealthy family shocked the community and country. There have been books and television shows about the killings.
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Prosecutors say he beat Earl and Terry Robertson to death with a baseball bat and a claw hammer to try and get $2 million of their money. He then staged the house to make it look like a break-in. He then fled by car to Pennsylvania, where police caught him. Authorities found the weapons and evidence of the crimes along the route from Rock Hill to Philadelphia.
He was found competent to stand trial in 1999 and has been on death row ever since. He has been back to court many times in the decades since for hearings on his appeals, including one time in York County where he refused to sit in court wearing shackles despite being a death row inmate and security risk.
Over three decades Robertson has filed appeals and lawsuits several times, including a federal lawsuit in 2011 that to this day remains pending under a judicial stay of execution order.
His state court appeals, which went on for more than two decades, ended last year. Then Robertson wrote the letter to the judge saying he wanted to fire his lawyers and be executed. That came after South Carolina executed six people, including Robertson’s best friend on death row, after not having executions for many years.
What happens now?
The Herald has reached out for comment about the lawsuit to the S.C. Department of Corrections, the S.C. Attorney General’s Office that represents state agencies in court, and Robertson’s lawyers, but so far none have responded.
The ongoing federal lawsuit dating back 15 years that has a stay of execution attached to it remains pending. That means that without a federal judge lifting that stay, Robertson cannot be executed by the state of South Carolina.
It is unclear when there will be court hearings in the new lawsuit filed by Robertson.
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