By admin 
South Carolina prison officials have fired back at a lawsuit filed by a Rock Hill death row inmate who killed his parents, saying convicts don’t get to choose their medical provider or what prescription drugs they get while locked up and facing execution.
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James Robertson, 52, has been on death row since 1999 for the murders of Terry and Earl Robertson in a scheme to get more than $2 million. After saying last year he wanted to be executed after decades of failed appeals, he changed his mind a few weeks ago and filed a federal lawsuit against three top S.C. Department of Corrections officials. It alleges his Constitutional rights were violated by not giving him the mental health drugs he wants and using rotating counselors.
Prison officials balked in a response filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, saying Robertson doesn’t get to decide what drugs he gets or who he talks to for his mental health.
Robertson’s claims “run head-long into a mountain of controlling authority that holds an inmate’s disagreement with a treatment plan or an inmate’s dissatisfaction with the overall quality of mental health treatment he receives from a prison does not amount to a constitutional violation,” lawyers for the prison system wrote.
And more, the lawsuit shows that Robertson is receiving mental health treatment as he has for 27 years on death row, prison officials said. It’s just not what Robertson wants.
The lawsuit “confirms that Plaintiff is receiving constitutionally adequate mental health care at SCDC,” according to prison officials.
Claims of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’
In his lawsuit, Robertson said not giving him specific drugs and providing him with a stable mental health counselor is “cruel and unusual punishment.” He has asked a federal judge to order a renewed drug plan and consistent counselors.
He filed the suit against 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.
In the response filed by lawyer Daniel Plyler for the three prisons officials, they said Robertson does get the same Seroquel mood-altering drug he wants. However, the prisons prescribe only the extended-release medication and not an instant-release version that Robertson claims he has a right to and has used previously, prisons officials said.
As to having the counselors he wants, prison officials said inmates don’t get to choose who gives them treatment on death row at Broad River prison in Columbia.
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“An inmate does not have a constitutional right to see a medical or mental health provider of his choice,” prison officials said in the court filing. “The Eighth Amendment guarantees access to adequate mental health care, nothing more. It does not guarantee full access to a specific provider, and it does not guarantee access to a specific provider on a repeated basis. “
Almost 30 years of spotlight on Rock Hill murders
Robertson’s case captured national attention when his parents were killed around Thanksgiving in 1997. Robertson, a former star student and Boy Scout, tried to cover up the killings by making their home look like a robbery turned violent.
Robertson used his father’s credit card while fleeing by car to Pennsylvania before he was caught there hours after his parents’ bodies were discovered.
The 1999 trial at the Moss Justice Center in York was broadcast nationwide on Court TV and covered nationally. A jury first found him guilty of double murder, armed robbery, and financial card fraud, then sentenced him to death.
There have been books and television specials about the crimes since.
Why hasn’t Robertson been executed?
South Carolina re-started executions in late 2024 after more than a decade without any.
Robertson’s appeals have gone on for most of the past three decades.
There are now two federal lawsuits keeping Robertson from being executed.
The first is one he filed in 2011 in federal court claiming he’s being held illegally in prison remains pending under a judicial stay of execution order. It is in that lawsuit where The Herald exclusively reported Robertson last year wrote to a judge saying he wanted to drop it and be executed. Lawyers then argued on his behalf that he didn’t have the metal capacity to decide to die.
In that lawsuit, secret mental health hearings were held in federal court earlier this year under a judge’s order. Mental records in the case are sealed under a judge’s order.
The drug and health care provider lawsuit now also must be finished before Robertson can be executed. The Herald reached out to the lawyer for the prisons officials and Robertson’s two lawyers in that medical lawsuit but have not yet heard back with any comment or statement.
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