That's the title of a collaboration between Texas Monthly and the Texas Tribune. Brandi Grissom's report runs as a TM article with the subtitle, "How should criminals who are mentally ill be punished?" in the March edition of the magazine. Here's the beginning of the article:
Wanda Banks remembers Andre Thomas when he was a bright, curious kid in her Sunday school class at Harmony Baptist Church, a little boy so eager to speak about the Bible stories he had memorized that he would shoot his hand into the air before she could even finish her question. Harmony Baptist, which sits at the edge of a predominantly black neighborhood on Sherman’s east side, served as a second home to Andre during his chaotic childhood. Banks used to drive him and his four brothers home on the church bus after Sunday school, and during the winter months, she always made a point to drop them off last so they could stay warm a little longer. Despite the charity that their mother received from the church, their small, unkempt home often lacked heat, electricity, and running water. Still, Andre never complained. “He was a very respectful kid, just a sweet kid,” Banks told me. “He could have been so brilliant with the right set of circumstances.”
From a young age, Andre’s appetite for knowledge about the world around him was insatiable. “He wanted to know why the grass was green and why the sky was blue,” one of his brothers, Danny Ross, told me. “He wanted answers for everything.” He was a tinkerer too, taking things apart to figure out how they worked, once disassembling a beat-up brown Fiat that his father, Danny Thomas, had bought for $300. “He tore it all to pieces and then put it back together,” recalled Thomas, shaking his head at the memory. Thomas was an ephemeral presence in his son’s life, providing little in the way of guidance. But Andre still managed to excel in school early on, and he made ambitious plans, sketching intricate drawings of the futuristic cars that he planned to design one day.
As he neared adolescence, though, something seemed to go awry.
At the Texas Tribune, "Andre Thomas: Mental Health, Criminal Justice Collide," is the first of a six-part series, by Grissom.
This is Part One in a six-part series exploring the intersections of the mental health and criminal justice systems in Texas. It examines the case of Andre Thomas, a death row inmate who began exhibiting signs of mental illness as a boy and committed a brutal triple murder in 2004. Blind because he pulled out both of his eyes while behind bars, Thomas awaits a federal court's decision on whether he is sane enough to be executed.
Both forms represent the highest values in journalism, shining a light onto a segment of society most people never see.
Earlier coverage of Andre Thomas begins at the link.
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