Texas is scheduled to carry out its 14th execution of the year, tonight in Huntsville. It would be the state's 461st execution since 1982. Texas has far and away the most active death chamber in America, accounting for more than 37% of the nation's post-Furman executions.
The Courier of Montgomery County has, "Judge denies execution stay for Jonathon Green." It's written by Nancy Flake.
A Montgomery man scheduled to die Wednesday for the June 21, 2000, murder of a 12-year-old Dobbin girl is mentally competent for execution, a Montgomery County judge ruled Monday.
Unless the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals or a federal court rules for a stay of execution, Jonathan Marcus Green, 42, will be put to death by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Wednesday for the kidnapping, rape and strangulation murder of Christina LeAnn Neal.
And:
Green had been diagnosed as schizophrenic, Rytting argued, and could make no rational connection about why he will be executed.
“The crux is whether he had a rational understanding of what he did,” Rytting said. “Mr. Green knows what the death penalty is. But he insists he is innocent based on the belief that he was in Conroe, Texas, at the time of the murder ... and based on the belief that there is a system of beings within him, some of whom want him dead.
“That is his concept of reality.”
The Supreme Court articulated the standard for competency to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright. The Court revisited the issue in 2007 in the case of Scott Panetti, a severely mentally ill Texas death row inmate.
To date, there have been 29 executions in the nation in 2010, and 1,217 executions since 1977.
Houston's KPFT-FM will host Execution Watch on the web and it's HD radio broadcast signal beginning at 6:00 p.m. (CDT), tonight.According to TDCJ, four more executions are scheduled in Texas during 2010, including one on Thursday evening. More execution dates will likely be set by state district courts this year.
Karl Keys at Capital Defense Weekly notes execution dates in Texas and other states.
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