HARRISBURG, Pa., April 28 -- A hearing was scheduled Friday on an Ohio woman's appeal to halt the May 2 execution of the Pennsylvania man convicted of killing her son. Aldona DeVetsco of suburban Cleveland, who is opposed to the death penalty, said Keith Zettlemoyer is mentally ill and is not competent to be executed for the 1980 murder of her son, Charles DeVetsco.
'My opposition...is even stronger given my observations of Keith Zettlemoyer and my belief that he was a very disturbed person at the time of the offense and at the time of trial,' DeVetsco said in petitions filed Thursday by the Pennsylvania Post-Conviction Defender Organization. Petitions were filed in both state and federal courts and a hearing was scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday in Scranton before U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik. Zettlemoyer, 39, would become the first person executed in Pennsylvania since 1962. He has told prison officials that he is ready to die and does not want to talk to lawyers. An affidavit submitted by Dr. Patricia Fleming, a psychologist who conducted a battery of tests on Zettlemoyer, said he is not competent to be executed because he suffers from 'major psychiatric illnesses' that 'render him unable to think or behave rationally.' Zettlemoyer was sentenced to death in Dauphin County Common Pleas Court in Harrisburg on April 24, 1981, for the Oct. 13, 1980, fatal shooting of Charles DeVetsco, 29, a co-worker who was scheduled to testify against him in a robbery case in Snyder County, about 50 miles north of Harrisburg.
