With time rapidly running out for Bermuda-born convicted killer Tracy Housel, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has confirmed that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has written to the governor of Georgia in the United States asking for the condemned man's death sentence be commuted to life in prison.

Blair made the announcement following a desperate appeal by Housel's mother, Lula Pellerin, for the British Government to intervene on her son's behalf since neither she nor his lawyers were optimistic that his final appeal to the US Supreme Court would be successful. Indeed, that Court rarely overturns death penalty verdicts.

Housel is a British national by virtue of being born here while his father was a civilian worker at the US base. He was sentenced to death by electrocution in 1986 for the murder of a woman he allegedly picked up from a truck stop, and has been on death row in a Georgia prison for the last 16 years while his appeals have wound their way through the US judicial system. Georgia recently outlawed the electric chair in favour of lethal injection.

On January 22 this year, 106 British MPs plus the country's Law Society and the Bar Council's Human Rights Committee signed 'amicus curiae' ('friend of the court') legal submissions on fair trial issues with America's highest court, following which British Labour MP Vera Baird wrote a letter to all of those signatories urging them to write to the Prime Minister. Earlier, 121 British MPs had signed an Early Day Motion filed by Ms Baird in support of 43-year-old Housel's commutation on the grounds that he may not have received a fair trial in accordance with international human rights law.

"Nothing short of intervention at the highest levels is sufficient when a British citizen faces execution in a matter of weeks," Ms Baird said at the time.

On December 18, 2001 lawyer and former Bermuda resident Gary Proctor wrote a letter to Premier Jennifer Smith on behalf of the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Centre. It was signed by himself, Ms Baird, and Adrian Fulford, QC, who heads Housel's UK legal team, and asked that the Bermuda Government make representations to Georgia's Pardons and Paroles Board on Housel's behalf.

To date the letter has not been acknowledged, and the Premier's office was not available for comment at Press time on Friday. Bermuda scrapped its death penalty law in 1999.

The US Supreme Court is expected to deliver its ruling on Housel's appeal later this month, and in the event that it fails, he could be executed by lethal injection between ten and 20 days later. The condemned man's last legal recourse would be to petition the Georgia Pardons and Parole Board, whose chairman has stated that no one on death row would ever get clemency while he held office.

According to Andie Lambe, UK Director of Reprieve, the same chairman is currently under serious criminal investigation by the Georgia Attorney General's office.

"Concern has also been raised regarding the Board's ability to make a fair clemency decision due to conflicts of interest," he said. "Another board member is also under criminal investigation by the state Attorney General's office, while a third member is being defended by that same office on a sexual harassment charge."

Mr. Housel's mother, Mrs. Lula Pellerin, who resides in North Carolina, has been quoted as saying she is "devastated" at the prospect of losing a second son following the suicide of another son last year, and does not know how she will continue should the execution take place.

In an interview with Britain's BBC Radio 4, the anguished mother said: "The justice that our government is pushing upon him is not right. Sixteen years in there on death row - he has lost his life already. If Tony Blair could say, 'Look, the young man was born a British subject until he dies and we are going to protect him' that would be a help to us, knowing that he may have to spend that time in prison, but he would not be dead."

Georgia has executed five death row inmates since last October, among them men with whom Housel had formed close friendships. Housel was born prematurely at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital on May 7, 1958 and his family moved back to the US one year later where Housel and his siblings experienced an horrendous upbringing, where violence and regular beatings at the hands of their alcoholic parents resulted in many untreated injuries. Ultimately, Housel suffered brain damage following these and other accidents.

Meanwhile, Housel's UK lawyer, Yasmin Waljee, recently said: "The UK has signed all relevant protocols abolishing the death penalty and maintains the position that it opposes the death penalty in all circumstances. It has consistently said it will urge states that retain the death penalty to observe minimum standards in its use, (and these) have not been observed in Tracy's case. It would be unlawful in international law to execute a man with brain damage. We expect high level and personal intervention in this case, nothing less is appropriate given the UK's position."

The death penalty is a contentious issue which also vexes US Supreme Court justices as they wrestle with the law and their personal beliefs. The contention that Housel did not receive a fair trial is apparently not without merit.

"After 20 years on the high court, I have to acknowledge that serious questions are being raised about whether the death penalty is being fairly administered in this country," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said last year, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also expressed similar concerns.