With time fast running out for Tracy Housel, a Bermuda-born British national who has been on death row in Georgia, USA since 1986, the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center (LCAC) is appealing to the Bermuda Government to intervene on his behalf.

In a letter to Premier Jennifer Smith, dated December 17, the organisation is asking the Government to make an appeal for clemency to Georgia's Pardons and Paroles Board to spare his life. The letter is signed by lawyer and chartered accountant Gary Proctor, who recently left Bermuda to work as a volunteer with LCAC; Vera Baird MP, a British MP who sponsored a House of Commons Early Day motion concerning Housel; and Adrian Fulford, QC, who heads Housel's UK legal team.

An Early Day motion is a device, generally not debated, which is designed to draw attention to an issue, and to elicit non-partisan support for it by inviting members to add their signatures to it.

The move by British MPs also has the blessing of Housel's US legal team.

"We will be pursuing whatever methods are appropriate to encourage the Bermuda Government to take whatever actions are appropriate, which include not only lobbying the UK Government to encourage them to continue their efforts, but also make their own efforts to the US Government," lawyer Robert McGlasson said.

What action, if any, the Bermuda Government intends to take was not known at press time last night. It is understood that Attorney General Dame Lois Browne Evans, who is a longstanding opponent of the death penalty, is taking a personal interest in Housel's case, and intends to appeal for clemency - in an unofficial capacity - to the Georgia Governor and the Board of Pardson and Parole.

Housel was convicted of the murder of Jeanne Drew on February 7, 1986. Now he faces imminent execution. His final appeal to the US Supreme Court has been filed and is pending. A ruling is expected either later this month or early next month. In the event that it is turned down Georgia will set a date for Housel's death by lethal injection. Once an execution date is set, Housel's last recourse will then be a clemency hearing to be attended by his legal team and others, including, his lawyers hope, representatives of the Bermuda and British Governments. Meanwhile, as a British national, Housel's case has attracted considerable attention in Britain, where Parliamentary concern is mounting over his lack of a fair trial in the US. More than 100 MPs have signed an Early Day Motion and Amicus Brief on his behalf.

In an unprecedented move by the UK, the Foreign Office intends to act on his behalf, and the British Government is already in the process of making representations to the Governor of Georgia and the Board of Pardons and Paroles for clemency on behalf of Housel as a British national. Finally, Amnesty International UK has also expressed alarm at the impending execution of another British national in the US. British concern is mirrored by lawyers and others in the US who are also fighting Housel's corner. Advocates for the condemned man's reprieve argue that his trial was unfair on several grounds: He was represented by a lone, court-appointed lawyer who was professionally inexperienced, had never handled a murder case before, had no knowledge of his client's medical problems and mental state; and who later admitted he had misdirected his client to plead guilty when an insanity defence would have been appropriate. Moreover, during the trial itself the jury was not told that Housel was brain-damaged as a result of an horrific childhood during which he was regularly and brutally abused by his alcoholic father, who also denied him medical treatment for his many injuries. Nor did they learn that at the time of the murder he was temporarily insane due to a severe, untreated medical condition which, combined with poor diet, drugs and alcohol, was known to produce a psychotic reaction. Had this evidence been presented in court a capital sentence would have been unlikely. Housel was born at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital in 1958 while his father was working at the US base at Kindley Field. The family returned to the US when he was a year old.