The StandDown Texas Project

David Dow on the Holmes Case

University of Houston Law Professor David R. Dow writes, "Death Penalty Is The Wrong Punishment For James Holmes," for the Daily Beast.

“Justice is death.”

With those three words, Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler attempted on Monday to justify his decision to seek the death penalty for James Holmes, who is charged with murdering twelve people and injuring 58 more in a movie theatre in Aurora, Colo., last July.

And:

Any human being who loves someone else can understand the impulse to see a murderer put to death. A version of that impulse explains why some loved ones of Holmes’s victims urged the district attorney to seek death; and it is precisely that impulse that explains why those survivors claim they cannot wait to witness Holmes’s execution.

But that impulse is an emotion, not a reason, and while it is easy to understand why many people have it, Brauchler should know the difference between a raw feeling and a reasoned argument. By ignoring that distinction, he has not only perverted the meaning of justice; he has insured that those who lost loved ones on that terrible night last July will have to keep reliving the horror, and looking at the face of the killer, for years to come.

Slate's Explainer posts "Capital Decision: James Holmes’ prosecutors will seek the death penalty. How do they decide that?"  It's by Brian Palmer.

Prosecutors announced Monday that they would seek the death penalty against James Holmes, who is accused of killing 12 people in a Colorado movie theater in July. The district attorney contacted 800 people affected—victims and their family members—before making the decision. What factors do prosecutors consider when deciding whether to seek death?

Number of victims, money, public opinion, and perhaps race. There is a formal layer and an informal layer to a prosecutor’s decision to seek the death penalty. He first must establish that the case involves one of the state’s aggravating factors, which are supposed to separate ordinary murders from the exceptionally bad. James Holmes clearly satisfied two of Colorado’s 17 aggravating factors: He killed multiple victims and put bystanders at risk. Formal eligibility, however, is a low bar. A 1997 study concluded that seven out of eight first-degree murders in California between 1988 and 1992 included at least one aggravating factor, but prosecutors pursue capital punishment in only a small fraction of eligible cases. Whether a prosecutor will actually seek the death penalty depends more on local political culture, office resources, and personal opinion than on statutory considerations. Statistical analyses also suggest that unconstitutional factors such as race and gender are involved.

Earlier coverage from Colorado begins at the link.

Holmes Prosecutor Responds to Plea Motion

The prosecutor's response in Colorado v. Holmes is at Scribd.

Today's Denver Post publishes the editorial, "Accept plea deal in Holmes trial."

Accused theater shooter James Holmes' offer to plead guilty to murder charges and spend the rest of his life in prison so he may avoid a death sentence would be a just resolution to a horrific case.

It would bring prompt closure for survivors and family members of the dead and wounded.

It would cut years, perhaps decades, from an expensive appeals process. And it would eliminate the issue of the uneven application of the death penalty in Colorado.

We hope George Brauchler, the top prosecutor in the 18th Judicial District, takes the deal — although early indications are that his office may be hostile to it.

"Aurora DA "extremely unlikely" to OK guilty plea by James Holmes," is the Post's news report written by John Ingold.

Prosecutors in the Aurora theater shooting case say they are "extremely unlikely" to accept an offer from suspect James Holmes to plead guilty unless they hear more details from him.

In a court filing Thursday, prosecutors write that after Holmes offered to plead guilty, they asked him and his attorneys to provide "specific access to information that would allow them to fully assess the Defendant and his alleged acts for purposes of determining a just outcome to this case." They say Holmes and his attorneys have repeatedly denied access to that information.

Because of that, prosecutors say Holmes' offer — which his attorneys disclosed in a court filing Wednesday — is not acceptable.

"There is not — and has never been — an actual or unqualified 'offer' to plead guilty," they write in the Thursday filing.

Significantly, the prosecution's filing was signed by 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler and not one of the deputy district attorneys more directly involved in the case.

The AP filing is, "James Holmes Trial: Prosecutors Reject Guilty Plea Offer From Aurora Massacre Suspect," by Dan Elliott and P. Solomon Banda.  It's via Huffington Post.

Prosecutors in the Colorado theater massacre case have rejected an offer from suspect James Holmes to plead guilty in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, saying the proposal can't be considered genuine because the defense has repeatedly refused to give them information needed to evaluate it.

No plea agreement exists, prosecutors said in a scathing court document Thursday, and one "is extremely unlikely based on the present information available to the prosecution."

They also said anyone reading news stories about the offer would inevitably conclude "the defendant knows that he is guilty, the defense attorneys know that he is guilty, and that both of them know that he was not criminally insane."

Neither the defense nor the prosecution immediately returned phone calls Thursday.

Holmes is charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder in the July 20 shootings in a packed theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora. Twelve people were killed and 70 were injured.

Holmes' attorneys disclosed in a court filing Wednesday that their client has offered to plead guilty, but only if he wouldn't be executed.

Prosecutors criticized defense attorneys for publicizing the offer, calling it a ploy meant to draw the public and the judge into what should be private plea negotiations.

Earlier coverage of the Colorado case begins at the link.

The Aurora, Colorado Theater Shooting Case

The Colorado v. Holmes plea motion is available at Scribd.

"James Holmes offers to plead guilty in Colorado massacre," is by Jenny Deam for the Los Angeles Times.

James E. Holmes, accused of unleashing the Aurora movie theater massacre in July, has offered to plead guilty to killing 12 people and injuring 70 if prosecutors do not seek the death penalty.

In an unusual court filing, defense lawyers revealed Wednesday that they had made the standing offer weeks ago for Holmes to serve life in prison without possibility of parole for the July 20 mass shooting.

So far the prosecution has declined the offer, the document said.

Dist. Atty. George Brauchler of Colorado's 18th Judicial District is to announce Monday whether he will seek the death penalty. Capital punishment is rare in Colorado, with only three people on death row.

Holmes' attorneys have been expected to use an insanity defense, and their latest filing said they could still do so at trial or sentencing. If he is found to be insane or to suffer from a mental defect, he could not be put to death.

Holmes, 25, a former neuroscience doctoral student at the University of Colorado-Denver, is charged with 166 counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder and weapons violations in connection with the massacre in a packed suburban movie theater. The case evoked worldwide horror and became a touchstone in the national gun debate.

Two weeks ago, an impatient Chief Judge William Sylvester entered a not guilty plea on Holmes' behalf after defense lawyers said they were not prepared to do so. The arraignment had been postponed several times, and the judge said the case needed to move forward.

The defense offer was revealed in a routine court scheduling document, making it that much more unusual, said Rick Kornfeld, a former federal prosecutor turned defense attorney who has been closely following the case. Typically, any negotiations between the two sides are kept under wraps until an agreement is reached, he said.

But Kornfeld called it a potentially smart strategic move by the defense because "it is clearly intended to put public pressure on the prosecution to resolve the case immediately." He said a plea would not only offer closure for victims but save the state millions of dollars for a protracted trial.

AP posts, "Ex-prosecutor: Death penalty decision wrenching," by Dan Elliott and P. Solomon Banda.  It's also available from the Times Free Press.

James Holmes is willing to spend the rest of his life in prison if it means there's no chance he'll be executed. Now prosecutors have to decide whether that's a deal they're willing to make with the former graduate student accused in last summer's Colorado movie theater massacre.

For former prosecutor Bob Gallagher, an earlier case involved one of the toughest decisions of his life.

He remembers the case in which defense attorneys came to him with tears in their eyes asking for a plea deal that would spare their client the death penalty.

He turned them down. The 1993 gunshot slayings of four people in a Denver-area Chuck E. Cheese pizzeria were so vicious and the suspect showed so little remorse, Gallagher said, that he believed the death penalty should be an option for the jury.

"That is no doubt one of the toughest decisions I've ever had to make," said Gallagher, the Arapahoe County district attorney at the time. "Am I, the elected DA, qualified to talk about and make up my mind on a moral decision? Should this person be put to death or not?"

Now, as Nathan Dunlap, who was convicted of the murders in 1996 and sentenced to die, waits on death row, Holmes may have a chance to avoid finding himself in the same place.

"Defense in Colorado Killings Seeks Plea Deal," by Dan Frosch at the New York Times.

Defense lawyers for James E. Holmes, who is charged with killing 12 people and wounding dozens more at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater last summer, signaled in court filings on Wednesday that they were willing to have Mr. Holmes plead guilty if he was spared the death penalty.

Mr. Holmes, who faces 166 counts of murder, attempted murder and other charges, would accept a sentence of life in prison without parole if prosecutors consented to the deal, his lawyers stated in the documents that were filed in Arapahoe County District Court.

“Mr. Holmes is currently willing to resolve the case to bring the proceedings to a speedy and definite conclusion for all involved,” his defense lawyers wrote. “It appears the only impediment to a resolution of this case would be if the prosecution chooses to seek the death penalty.”

"Lawyers for accused Colorado theater gunman offer guilty plea," by Keith Coffman and Chris Frantz for ReutersLegal.

In Wednesday's pleading, defense lawyers said that if prosecutors agree to take the death penalty off the table for Holmes the case could be resolved at Monday's hearing.

Attorneys for the former University of Colorado neuroscience graduate student, who surrendered to officers outside the theater minutes after the shooting rampage, had been expected to mount an insanity defense on his behalf at trial.

"As previously stated in court, counsel for Mr. Holmes are still exploring a mental health defense, and counsel will vigorously present and argue any and all appropriate defenses at a trial or sentencing proceeding as necessary," defense lawyers said in the court papers.

"Nevertheless, Mr. Holmes is currently willing to resolve the case to bring the proceedings to a speedy and definite conclusion for all involved," the defense said.

Lawyers for Holmes have said in court filings that their client has been hospitalized twice since his arrest, once after hitting his head against a cell wall.

Holmes was also held in restraints for several days at a psychiatric hospital in November after jail officials determined he was a threat to himself, according to his defense team.

"James Holmes may plead guilty to avoid death penalty, court documents show," is by John Ingold for the Denver Post.

The move swings the spotlight onto prosecutors, who have said they will announce during a court hearing Monday whether they will seek the death penalty. Prosecutors are talking with theater shooting victims and their families to hear their opinions on capital punishment for the case.

Holmes' attorneys wrote in their motion that prosecutors have not accepted the offer. Denver defense attorney Dan Recht said the offer narrows prosecutors' decisions to a single question: Is death the only acceptable punishment in the case?

"Holmes can't offer any more than he is offering," said Recht, who has been following the case. "The choice for the prosecution could not be clearer."

Earlier coverage of the high-visibility Colorado case begins at the link.

An Update From Colorado

"Death-penalty foes turn up heat on Gov. Hickenlooper," is by John Ingold for the Denver Post.  Here's an extended excerpt:

Attorneys for Colorado death-row inmate Nathan Dunlap are working on a clemency petition in the hopes of persuading Gov. John Hickenlooper to spare the killer's life.

Records show, however, that the petition will not be the first outreach by Dunlap's attorneys to the governor's office. E-mails provided to The Denver Post as part of an open-records request reveal that Dunlap's attorneys have been in regular contact with members of Hickenlooper's legal team.

The messages are mostly brief notes alerting Hickenlooper's lawyers to new developments on death-penalty policies around the country or reports on capital punishment in Colorado. But they speak to a larger, quiet effort to change Hickenlooper's mind on the death penalty, amid signs that the governor's position has recently wavered.

That effort will gain more attention when a bill to repeal capital punishment is introduced in the legislature as soon as this week. For a man in charge of a state that hasn't executed anyone in 15 years, Hickenlooper will soon have two big decisions to make on the death penalty.

"I think they're listening. They're always listening," Lisa Cisneros, the executive director of Coloradans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said of the governor's office. "But I don't know where they're leaning on it."

Rep. Claire Levy, a Boulder Democrat expected to be one of the bill's sponsors, said the bill would repeal the death penalty as a sentencing option on future crimes. For murders committed after the bill becomes law, the highest punishment would be life in prison without parole.

The bill would not affect current murder cases, such as the one against Aurora theater-shooting suspect James Holmes. It also would not have a direct impact on Dunlap, whose last guaranteed appeal was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court last month. That decision cleared the way for an execution date to be set for Dunlap, who was convicted of killing four people in 1993 at an Aurora Chuck E. Cheese restaurant.

Also from Colorado, Bloomberg reports, "Accused Movie Shooter May Face Exam If He Pleads Insanity."  It's written by Joel Rosenblatt & Jeff Kass.

James Holmes, the accused Colorado movie theater shooting suspect who might face the death penalty if convicted, may be the first such defendant to challenge the constitutionality of the state’s insanity defense laws.

Arapahoe County District Court Judge William Sylvester in Centennial, Colorado, said yesterday in an order advising Holmes that, if he pleads not guilty by reason of insanity at his arraignment today, he would be required to submit to a mental examination. Sylvester also said that he would set a trial date after getting the report.

A trial would probably be delayed by challenges by Holmes’s lawyers to Colorado laws allowing prosecutors to conduct interviews while a defendant is under the influence of a so-called truth serum, said Karen Steinhauser, a former Denver prosecutor now in private practice. Defense lawyers have also challenged a provision of the law blocking Holmes from calling witnesses to present evidence about his mental condition if he doesn’t cooperate with court-appointed psychiatrists, she said.

Sylvester previously decided that the constitutional challenges to the law aren’t before the court now and declined to rule on them. Still, those issues are likely to be litigated if prosecutors seek the death penalty, Steinhauser said.

“We have not had an insanity plea in a case in which the death penalty has been sought,” Steinhauser said. Prosecutors have 63 days from today’s arraignment to decide whether they’ll seek the death penalty, she said.

“Once that decision is made, I think the defense will ask for reconsideration of the issues that were raised in their original motions pertaining to the death penalty sentencing phase,” she said.

Earlier coverage from Colorado begins at the link.

Death Penalty Insanity in the Case of Andre Thomas

That's the title of a Dallas Morning News editorial, following Brandi Grissom's Texas Tribune/Texas Monthly reporting on Andre Thomas.

Stripped of the modern trappings of the court system, the saga of condemned Texas murderer Andre Thomas resembles a medieval horror story featuring madness, a family’s homicidal slaughter, the defendant’s self-mutilation and a waiting executioner.

Knowing it’s real makes the story almost too grotesque to stomach.

Still, it was a service by the Texas Tribune and Texas Monthly to render it in stark detail, because it challenges this state’s collective conscience.

Thomas would have a standard death row cell today were it not for his mental instability. With his eyelids surgically shut over empty sockets, he waits in a prison psychiatric unit until a federal judge decides whether he can be put to death.

A reading of the case file is a journey into darkness.

And:

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has deferred to the jury verdict, ruling that Thomas “is clearly ‘crazy,’ but he is also ‘sane’ under Texas law.”

It seems, rather, that the world has gone mad. That this human being is responsible for his psychotic actions is a preposterous notion. To strap down and terminate the life of such a tortured creature is the way a medieval society would deal with its embarrassments.

Earlier coverage of Andre Thomas begins with Grissom's reporting, noted at the link.

Supreme Court to Review Kansas Case

"U.S. Supreme Court to hear 2nd Kansas death penalty appeal," is the Wichita Eagle report by Hurst Laviana.

For the second time since the state’s capital murder law was reinstated in 1994, the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of a death sentence that was overturned by the Kansas Supreme Court.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said the nation’s highest court will decide whether the state Supreme Court acted properly when it overturned the death sentence imposed on Scott Cheever, who was convicted of the 2005 murder of Greenwood County Sheriff Matt Samuels.

The state court overturned Cheever’s conviction in August, ruling that prosecutors violated his right against self-incrimination when they allowed an expert witness to testify about the results of a mental exam that Cheever was required by a judge to take.

The Fifth Amendment does not prevent a judge from ordering a defendant to submit to a mental exam, the state court ruling said, but it does prevent the state from using the exam against the defendant at trial.

When he announced in September that he was appealing that ruling, Schmidt said he didn’t think the state court ruling correctly reflected the requirements of the Fifth Amendment.

The case is Kansas v. Cheever (12-609.)

The AP filing is, "High court to review Kansas sheriff's killing," via the Seattle Times.

The Supreme Court has agreed to consider reinstating the conviction and death sentence of a man who said he was high on meth when he killed a Kansas sheriff.

The justices on Monday said they will review a state Supreme Court ruling that granted a new trial to Scott Cheever, who admitted to shooting Greenwood County Sheriff Matt Samuels.

The Kansas court said Cheever's rights were violated during his trial because a psychiatrist was allowed to testify about Cheever's psychological records without his consent.

"U.S. justices agree to weigh defendant's self-incrimination claim," is the Reuters' post by Lawrence Hurley, via the Chicago Tribune.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider whether a criminal defendant's right against self-incrimination is violated when a psychiatrist who examined him testifies about his mental state.

And:

The legal question is whether Cheever's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was violated when the state called a psychiatrist who had examined Cheever to testify in order to rebut the claim that the defendant was incapable of rational thought.

The psychiatrist's testimony was based in part on what Cheever had said to him during the evaluation. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in Cheever's favor.

Oral argument and a decision are expected in the U.S. Supreme Court's next term, which begins in October and runs until June 2014.

Courthouse News Service posts, "Justices to Look at Meth User's Competency Exam," by Barbara Leonard.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to resolve two issues related to the case:

"1. When a criminal defendant affirmatively introduces expert testimony that he lacked the requisite mental state to commit capital murder of a law enforcement officer due to the alleged temporary and long-term effects of the defendant's methamphetamine use, does the state violate the defendant's Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination by rebutting the defendant's mental state defense with evidence from a court-ordered mental evaluation of the defendant?

"2. When a criminal defendant testifies in his own defense, does the State violate the Fifth Amendment by impeaching such testimony with evidence from a court-ordered mental evaluation of the defendant?"

Earlier coverage of Scott Cheever's case begins at the link.  Thanks to Donna Schneweis for circulating.

Andre Thomas: Questions of Competence

That's the title of Brandi Grissom's report in the today's Texas Tribune, the sixth and final installment in her series, "Trouble in Mind."  Here's the beginning:

On Feb. 15, 2005, nearly a year after Andre Thomas committed a brutal triple murder that rocked this North Texas town — the stabbing and mutilation of his estranged wife, Laura Boren, 20, their 4-year-old son, Andre Jr., and her 1-year-old daughter, Leyha Hughes — Thomas’ much-awaited trial began.

“I really can’t remember a single person I spoke to in town who didn’t think it should be prosecuted as a death penalty case,” Grayson County District Attorney Joe Brown recalled. 

Sitting at the defense table, Thomas appeared almost catatonic at times. He wore a black patch where his right eye had been and munched on Skittles during some of the trial’s most stomach-churning testimony. 

Despite the fact that he had ripped out his eye and had a long history of mental instability, 21-year-old Thomas was found competent to stand trial and was later sentenced to death. At age 29, he is blind — he pulled out his other eye while on death row — and is awaiting execution in a psychiatric prison. In a federal appeal, Thomas’ lawyers argue that his trial was unfair and that executing the mentally ill man would “make a mockery of our system of justice.” Prosecutors in Grayson County argue that Thomas’ drinking and drug abuse exacerbated whatever mental issues he had and fueled his rage, that he exaggerated symptoms of mental illness, and that the jury fairly assessed his punishment. (Click here to view an interactive timeline of the case.)

For criminal justice advocates, Thomas’ case raises critical questions about how courts determine competency for trial and about the fairness of a legal system that prevents juries from knowing what might happen to a defendant if they find him not guilty by reason of insanity. Most starkly, Thomas’ case presents questions about how mentally ill defendants who commit unimaginable crimes should be punished and whether they should be exempt from the death penalty, an issue that the U.S. Supreme Court may soon tackle.

This collaboration between the Tribune and Texas Monthly runs in a different form in the March edition of TM, "Trouble in MInd: How should criminals who are mentally ill be punished?"

Salon takes note of Grissom's reporting in, "A schizophrenic who gouged out his eyes is on Texas death row," by Natasha Lennard.

Texas Tribune managing editor Brandi Grissom has followed Thomas’ case closely. As she noted in an excellent feature for theTexas Monthly, “as he awaits execution, Andre and his tragic case force uncomfortable questions about the intersection of mental illness and the criminal justice system.” Thomas is certainly not the only death row inmate to have been diagnosed with mental illness; more than 20 percent of the 290 inmates on Texas’ death row are considered mentally ill, as Grissom noted. But the extremity of his situation has prompted fervid responses locally and nationally. “It’s astonishing, just how many problems in the legal system [this case] exemplifies,” said Levin in a phone interview.

Who gets to be sane? Who gets to be accountable? Who gets to be executed? — Thomas, fully blind and heavily medicated, faces the death penalty as a limit case for Texas’ answer to these problematic questions.

Earlier coverage of Andre Thomas begins at the link.

Continuing Coverage of Andre Thomas & 'Trouble in Mind'

Today's Texas Tribune posts, "Andre Thomas: Struggling to Maintain Sanity In Prison," by Brandi Grissom.  It's part five of the six-part series, "Trouble in Mind."  There are infographics at the link.

Thomas is among thousands of mentally ill inmates in the state’s sprawling prison system, which is struggling to keep pace with the increasing need for mental health care. After years of state budget cuts that resulted in trimming staff and reducing programs, leaders at the University of Texas Medical Branch, which provides much of that care, say they need more state funding to provide adequate treatment. And some lawmakers want the prison system to adopt policies that may help alleviate some inmates’ mental health problems by reducing the use of solitary confinement, where more than 8,000 inmates now find themselves, according to prison officials.

After being convicted of murder in 2005, Thomas, then 22, was sent to TDCJ’s death row at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston. On the health status form that medical staff from the Grayson County Jail sent along with Thomas when he was transferred, they wrote that he was a “paranoid schizophrenic,” that he had “enucleated” his own eye, and that he was wearing mittens to prevent him from ripping out the other eye. (Click here to view an interactive timeline of the case.)

Like the rest of the condemned, Thomas spent 23 hours a day confined alone in a 6-foot-by-10-foot cell. There, his mental illness worsened, his lawyers say.

Part four of Grissom's series ran as, "Advocates Seek Mental Health Changes, Including Power to Detain," in the Sunday Texas edition of the New York Times, and as, "Andre Thomas: Gaps in a 30-Year-Old Mental Health Code," at the Tribune.

At least twice in the three weeks before the crime, Mr. Thomas had sought mental health treatment, babbling illogically and threatening to commit suicide. On two occasions, staff members at the medical facilities were so worried that his psychosis made him a threat to himself or others that they sought emergency detention warrants for him.

Despite talk of suicide and bizarre biblical delusions, he was not detained for treatment. Mr. Thomas later told the police that he was convinced that Ms. Boren was the wicked Jezebel from the Bible, that his own son was the Antichrist and that Leyha was involved in an evil conspiracy with them.

He was on a mission from God, he said, to free their hearts of demons.

Hospitals do not have legal authority to detain people who voluntarily enter their facilities in search of mental health care but then decide to leave. It is one of many holes in the state’s nearly 30-year-old mental health code that advocates, police officers and judges say lawmakers need to fix. In a report last year, Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit advocacy organization, called on lawmakers to replace the existing code with one that reflects contemporary mental health needs.

“It was last fully revised in 1985, and clearly the mental health system has changed drastically since then,” said Susan Stone, a lawyer and psychiatrist who led the two-year Texas Appleseed project to study and recommend reforms to the code. Lawmakers have said that although the code may need to be revamped, it will not happen in this year’s legislative session. Such an undertaking requires legislative studies that have not been conducted. But advocates are urging legislators to make a few critical changes that they say could prevent tragedies, including giving hospitals the right to detain someone who is having a mental health crisis.

From the time Mr. Thomas was 10, he had told friends he heard demons in his head instructing him to do bad things. The cacophony drove him to attempt suicide repeatedly as an adolescent, according to court records. He drank and abused drugs to try to quiet the noise.

By the time he was 16, he was a father with a long history of arrests. At 18, he was married to his son’s mother. A few months after their wedding, the two separated. Mr. Thomas struggled to hold a job, and the older he got, friends and family members say, the more pronounced his mental illness became.

By March 5, 2004, it was too much. A friend took Mr. Thomas to a local mental health clinic, where he told staff members that he wanted to die and that he could not stand the sound of his own voice. He said that if someone there did not shoot him, he would do it himself, court records show. Frantic and delusional, he said, “If I can’t talk to someone now, I will throw myself in front of a bus.”

Clinicians told Mr. Thomas to go to the emergency room, and at their request a judge issued an emergency detention order. But Mr. Thomas did not make it to the emergency room that day, and no one sought him out.

This collaboration between the Tribune and Texas Monthly runs in a different form in the March edition of TM, "Trouble in MInd: How should criminals who are mentally ill be punished?"

Earlier coverage of Andre Thomas begins at the link.

At Huffington Post, Chicago attorney Andrea Lyon posts, "Blind Justice.

This matters because the United States Supreme Court in a case called Ford v. Wainwright that the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibited the execution of the insane. "We may seriously question the retributive value of executing a person who has no comprehension of why he has been singled out and stripped of his fundamental right to life," wrote Justice Thurgood Marshall in his majority opinion. Nonetheless, the court left it up to the states to determine who was too mentally ill to be put to death. And as we know, the devil is in the details.

Mr. Thomas's case shouldn't even be considered a close one legally -- he simply is too mentally ill to execute. In fact, Mr. Thomas has been found by the department of corrections too mentally ill to be on death row -- so he is housed in a mental health facility where medication appears to be of some help. He is too ill for death row, but not to be killed by the State of Texas? If this case does not fall into the category of someone who should not be executed under our law, it is hard to imagine who would fit in that category. The state of Texas should abandon its pursuit of death in this case, and continue to confine Mr. Thomas in a locked mental health facility.

This case illustrates is something even more troubling; our failure to have any real strategy for dealing with mental illness. Tragically, just weeks before the murders for which he was sentenced to death, mental health professionals issued detention orders, fearing what Andre Thomas would do to himself, or others. Twice the police failed to carry out those orders including one that had been issued just days before these voices commanded him to commit these acts.

I wish I could tell you that this is the only time something like this has happened, but it isn't.

'Trouble in Mind' - Part 3 of 6

"Andre Thomas: Services Scarce for Troubled Youths," is part three of the six-part Texas Tribune series, "Trouble in Mind."  There is an infographic at the link.

In a letter to his pregnant girlfriend, Laura Boren, on July 1, 1999 — the day after his latest threat to commit suicide — Andre Thomas said he worried he wouldn’t be around for his son.

“I love you so much, and tell my beautiful son I love him, too,” he wrote from the Grayson County Juvenile Detention Center. “I cry at night when I think about him having to grow up without [me] being there.”

There was little doubt Thomas, now 16, needed mental health treatment: By age 10 voices echoed in his head; by 13, he had twice attempted suicide. One of his first arrests of at least six came at age 11 after he and some buddies took golf carts for a 4 a.m. joy ride. In 1997, when he was 14, he was caught three times stealing cars.

This collaboration between the Tribune and Texas Monthly runs in a different form in the March edition of TM, "Trouble in MInd: How should criminals who are mentally ill be punished?"  It's in the March edition.

Earlier coverage of the Tribune series begins at the link.

Andre Thomas: The Mentally Ill, From Asylums to Jails

That's the title of the second installment of "Trouble in Mind," written by Brandi Grissom, at the Texas Tribune.  It's a collaboration between the Tribune and Texas Monthly examining Texas death row inmate Andre Thomas' mental illness.  Here's the beginning of today's installment in the six-part series:

Wanda Banks remembers Andre Thomas and his brothers from the Sunday school classes she taught at Harmony Baptist Church, a modest brick building that welcomes parishioners with a plaque reminding them it’s a place “Where Everybody is Somebody.”

Sitting in her office behind the church, Banks said she is still troubled by what became of Thomas, who for years manifested signs of mental illness before being convicted and sentenced to death in 2005 for the brutal murders of his estranged wife and her two children — one of whom was his son. (Click here to view an interactive timeline of the case.)

Banks, who would drive Thomas and his brothers in the church bus on Sundays, knew that their mother’s behavior was unusual and that the boys were regularly left to fend for themselves. But as she racked her mind to think of clues she might have missed that could have helped her steer Thomas on a better course, she came up blank.

Earlier coverage of this extraordinary journalism is at the link.  That's also where earlier coverage of Andre Thomas' case begins.

Grissom's report runs in a different form in the Texas Monthly article, "Trouble in MInd: How should criminals who are mentally ill be punished?"  It's in the March edition.

Trouble in Mind

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.

Arkansas Roundup

"Ark. House panel advances lethal injection bill," is the AP report, via the Danbury News Times.

An Arkansas House committee has approved a proposal to rewrite a 2009 lethal injection law that the state Supreme Court threw out last year.

The House Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to advance a measure that would spell out how the Arkansas Department of Correction is to carry out executions. The bill now goes to the House.

Republican Sen. Bart Hester of Cave Springs introduced the proposal after the Arkansas Supreme Court struck down a 2009 lethal injection law in June.

Earlier coverage of the Arkansas lethal injection legislation begins at the link.

Also from Arkansas, "Ark. court reopens death row case for Karl Roberts, accused of killing niece," by the Associated Press.  It's via KTHV-TV.

The Arkansas Supreme Court says the case of a death row inmate convicted of killing his 12-year-old niece ought to be reopened.

And:

He initially waived his rights to appeal, but changed his mind hours before he was to be put to death during a planned double execution in 2004.

The high court said Thursday it previously failed to ensure that Roberts was competent to waive his rights to appeal.

The two Arkansas Supreme Court rulings in Roberts v. Arkansas are at the links.

How Crazy Is Too Crazy to Be Executed? - Updated

That's the title of a lengthy examination of the case of Andre Thomas in Texas.  It's written by Marc Bookman for Mother Jones; it's subtitled: "The voices told Andre Thomas to gouge out his eyes. But even that hasn't convinced the state of Texas to reconsider his death sentence."  There is audio at the link.  Here's the beginning of this disturbing report:

Years later, after Andre Thomas had been convicted of killing his estranged wife, his 4-year-old son and her 13-month-old daughter in the most bizarre case in Grayson County history, after he had received a death sentence and been told that it would be imposed at the appropriate future time, after he had been dispatched to Texas' death row to wait his turn with the other condemned men and women, the prosecutors were still talking about "the eyeball issue."

Certainly there were other details that made the crime uniquely memorable. For one thing, Andre had cut out the children's hearts and returned home with the organs in his pockets. For another, he was careful to use three different knives so that the blood from each body would not cross-contaminate, thereby ensuring that the demons inside each of them would die. He then stabbed himself in the chest, but he did not die as he had hoped. In fact, he was well enough to leave a message on his wife's parents' phone explaining that he thought he was in hell, and he managed to confess to the police what he had done before they took him in for emergency surgery.

The entire episode had biblical overtones—Andre had convinced himself that his wife was Jezebel, his son the Antichrist, and her daughter just plain evil. In short, the case had enough spectacular aspects to keep the most jaded of court watchers buzzing for months, but it was the eyeball issue that garnered most of the attention. And that was only the beginning.

Earlier coverage of Andre Thomas' case begins at the link.

2/14 - Simon McCormack posts, "Andre Thomas, Death Row Inmate, Faces Execution Despite History Of Mental Health Issues," at Huffington Post, pointing to the Mother Jones article.

Mississippi Supreme Court Orders Judge to Write His Own Findings

The Mississippi Supreme Court order in Chase v. Mississippi is available in Adobe .pdf format.

"Mississippi court asks judge to resubmit Chase findings," is the AP report filed by Jack Elliott Jr.  it's via the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.

The Mississippi Supreme Court has asked a Copiah County judge to clarify his ruling that death row inmate Ricky Chase is mentally competent.

The justices say it appears the trial judge adopted findings submitted by prosecutors. The justices say they want the judge to put the findings into his own words.

And:

In 2010, Circuit Judge Lamar Pickard in Copiah County ruled against Chase's claims of mental disability

In an order issued Jan. 17, Supreme Court Presiding Justice Jess Dickinson said Pickard must resubmit his findings to the Supreme Court and provide reasons why he denied Chase's petition.

Dickinson said the Supreme Court also wanted to make sure that mental health experts were allowed to render opinions to the trial court on testing done on Chase by other doctors such as those at the Mississippi State Hospital in Whitfield.

Additional News Coverage of Ryan v. Gonzales Ruling

The Supreme Court ruling in Ryan v. Gonzales is available in Adobe .pdf format.

"Justices Rule on Staying Death Row Challenges," is the title of Adam Liptak's report in today's New York Times.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously ruled that federal courts should not automatically suspend postconviction challenges from death row inmates who are mentally incompetent to help their lawyers. The decision left open the possibility that such suspensions may sometimes be warranted, but it said that they should not be indefinite.

“Where there is no reasonable hope of competence,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court, “a stay is inappropriate.”

The Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to put mentally incompetent defendants on trial because they cannot understand the proceedings against them or assist their lawyers. The court has also barred “carrying out a sentence of death upon a prisoner who is insane.”

Tuesday’s decision in a pair of cases — Ryan v. Gonzales, No. 10-930, and Tibbals v. Carter, No. 11-218 — concerned challenges brought after trial and before execution. One involved Ernest Valencia Gonzales, who was convicted of stabbing an Arizona couple in front of their 7-year-old son, killing the father. The other concerned Sean Carter, an Ohio man convicted of raping his adoptive grandmother and stabbing her to death.

By the time the federal courts considered the two men’s challenges to their state court convictions, there was substantial evidence that they were mentally incompetent. Relying on different federal statutes, the appeals courts in the two cases said that the challenges must await their return to mental competence.

When the cases were argued in October, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said he was concerned that the rulings were a ploy “that will permit stays in virtually every capital case” because “a lot of district judges and a lot of court of appeals judges don’t like the death penalty and will go to some length to prevent the imposition of that sentence.”

At SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston posts the analysis, "Opinion recap: Rees clarified, after forty-six years."

For more than forty-six years, the Supreme Court’s brief rulings in the Virginia death row case of Melvin Davis Rees, Jr., have remained in the Supreme Court’s records, but few have paid attention to them since and their meaning was never clarified.  The Justices finally did so on Tuesday, ruling that the actions it took in Rees v. Peyton in 1966 and 1967 did not give state prisoners a right to delay their federal court challenges until they are mentally competent enough to proceed.   No federal law, the Court decided unanimously, gives an incompetent state prisoner any right to keep a habeas case on hold until he can regain mental understanding of what is going on.   The habeas case can go ahead with just the lawyers involved, the ruling said.

Although the Court did not say so explicitly, the new decision in Ryan v. Gonzales (10-930) also appeared to mean that state prisoners have no freestanding right to be competent so that they can take part when their case gets into a federal habeas court — an issue separate from whether they had a right to a delay while they remain incompetent.  (Decided along with the Ryan case, from Arizona, was a companion case from Ohio, Tibbals v. Carter, 11-218.)  Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the nine-to-zero decision.

The Rees case of nearly five decades ago has been one of the Court’s most abiding mysteries.   After ordering a test of his mental capacity, and then being told that Rees was incompetent, the Court in 1967 simply placed his case in a state of perpetual inactivity — until Rees died in prison, some twenty-eight years later, in 1995.  Then, the Court responded by dismissing his case in two words.

"Top court says prisoner incompetence no bar to appeal," is by Jonathan Stempel for ReutersLegal.

Two death row inmates were not entitled to a delay of their federal appeals on the grounds that they were incompetent to assist their lawyers, the U.S. Supreme Court said on Tuesday.

In a unanimous ruling against inmates Ernest Valencia Gonzales and Sean Carter, the court also said federal judges cannot indefinitely delay appeals of state criminal convictions in the hope that the defendants might eventually become competent enough to help out.

Justice Clarence Thomas said defense lawyers are "quite capable" of reviewing cases without their clients' help and can identify arguments or state court errors that can be raised on appeal.

He said a district judge who believes an incompetent defendant could substantially aid in his defense should examine the likelihood that the defendant will regain competence.

In contrast, "where there is no reasonable hope of competence, a stay merely frustrates the state's attempts to defend its presumptively valid judgment," Thomas wrote.

Local coverage of the cases includes:

"Ruling: U.S. judges can suspend some death-row appeals," by Michael Kiefer in the Arizona Republic.

"Court rules on Trumbull man’s appeal," is by Christopher Bobby in Ohio's Warren Tribune Chronicle.

Earlier coverage of Ryan v. Gonzales begins at the link.

Competency & Post-Conviction Review

The Supreme Court ruling in Ryan v. Gonzales is available in Adobe .pdf format.

"High Court: judges cannot indefinitely delay death row appeal to wait for convict’s competency," is the AP report, via the Washington Post.

The Supreme Court says federal judges cannot indefinitely delay a death row inmate’s federal appeals to see if the convict can become mentally competent enough to help his lawyer.

The high court unanimously ruled Tuesday against Arizona death row inmate Ernest Gonzales and Ohio death row inmate Sean Carter.

Inmates appealing state death sentences to federal court have a right to a lawyer. But the courts never said whether the inmates have to be mentally competent enough to help their lawyers with their federal appeals. Gonzales and Carter wanted the high court to say that federal judges have discretion to hold up proceedings indefinitely until the inmates are ready.

Courthouse News Service posts,"Incompetency Need Not Stay Habeas Proceedings."  It's filed by Barbara Leonard.

Prisoners cannot use mental incompetency as a reason to suspend their bids for federal habeas relief, the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The high court looked at the issue by consolidating the cases of Sean Carter, who won relief from the 6th Circuit, and Ernest Valencia Gonzales, whose case went before the 9th Circuit.

And:

Each federal appeals court cited a different federal law in granting stays to Carter and Gonzales, but neither maneuver passed muster Tuesday with the high court.

"Both the Ninth and Sixth Circuits have concluded that death row inmates pursuing federal habeas are entitled to a suspension of proceedings when found incompetent," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court. "The Ninth Circuit located this right in §3599, while the Sixth Circuit located it in §4241. Neither section provides such a right.

"Section 3599(a)(2) guarantees federal habeas petitioners on death row the right to federally funded counsel. ... But §3599 does not direct district courts to stay proceedings when habeas petitioners are found incompetent."

The court similarly shot down the 9th Circuit's references to the precedent it set in Rohan v. Wood­ford and Nash v. Ryan.

"We are not persuaded by the Ninth Circuit's assertion that a habeas petitioner's mental incompetency could 'evis­cerate the statutory right to counsel' in federal habeas proceedings," Thomas wrote. "Given the backward-looking, record-based nature of most federal habeas proceedings, counsel can generally provide effective representation to a habeas petitioner regardless of the petitioner's competence. In­deed, where a claim is 'adjudicated on the merits in state court proceedings,' counsel should, in most circumstances, be able to identify whether the 'adjudication ... resulted in a decision that was con­trary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,' without any evi­dence outside the record. Attorneys are quite capable of reviewing the state-court record, identifying legal errors, and marshaling relevant arguments, even without their clients' assistance.

The court also took a dim view of the six-year delay that preceded Gonzales' habeas petition.

"This was certainly ample time for his attorney to research and present the claims," Thomas wrote.

Earlier coverage of the two cases begins at the link.

South Dakota Death Sentenced Reversed

The South Dakota Supreme Court ruling in South Dakota v. Berget is available in Adobe .pdf format.

"South Dakota Supreme Court overturns death penalty for man convicted in prison guard's killing," is the AP report filed by Dirk Lammers.  It's via the Minneapolis StarTribune.

The South Dakota Supreme Court has overturned a state prison inmate's death sentence for the killing of a prison guard nearly two years ago.

In an opinion released Thursday, the justices said Rodney Berget, 50, must get a new sentencing hearing because the circuit judge who sentenced him to die improperly considered a statement Berget made to a psychiatrist.

The high court said it could not conclude that the use of the statement, in which Berget said he deserves the death penalty for taking Ronald "R.J" Johnson's life and destroying a family, was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

"This statement, while expressing Berget's belief that he deserves the death penalty, does not touch on his motivation for pleading guilty," Chief Justice David Gilbertson wrote.

Berget pleaded guilty to killing Johnson on April 12, 2011 — the prison guard's 63rd birthday — at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. Circuit Judge Bradley Zell of Sioux Falls sentenced Berget to death, and he appealed the sentence but not the conviction.

Eric Robert, who also pleaded guilty in Johnson's death, was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in October. A third inmate, Michael Nordman, was given a life sentence for providing materials used in the slaying.

The high court said the circuit judge improperly considered the statement Berget made to Dr. David Bean during a competency evaluation, which was a violation of Berget's right to be free from self-incrimination.

Related posts are in the expert witnesses index.

Florida Tries to Execute the 'Prince of God'

That's the title of Andrew Cohen's latest post at the Atlantic.  It's subtitled, "State officials say John Ferguson is faking his mental illness. The law says the state can't execute an incompetent man. Something's gotta give."  Here's the opening:

Florida Governor Rick Scott wanted, finally, to get rid of John Ferguson, but he wanted to appear fair in doing so. The convicted multiple murderer had been on the Sunshine State's death row for decades -- for 34 years, for a generation -- but questions lingered about his mental competency. As far back as 1971, in fact, six years before Ferguson first killed, the state's own psychiatrists had diagnosed him as suffering from "a major mental disorder" that rendered him "psychotic and incompetent." Forty years later, he was hardly better. 

So after Governor Scott set Ferguson's execution date for October 16th, and defense attorneys duly alerted officials to their client's diminished mental state, the governor appointed three psychiatrists to a "commission" to evaluate Ferguson, to determine whether he was sane enough to be lawfully executed by the state. The psychiatrists, who had never before seen or treated Ferguson, were ordered to move quickly -- to examine the prisoner on October 1st and issue their report on October 2nd. Here's how the defense describes what happened next:

Earlier coverage of John Ferguson's case begins at the link.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes. I added the compentency category index in April.  Earlier posts dealing with competency to be executed are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.  Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

News From Arizona

Today's Arizona Republic reports, "Prosecutor files motion vs. judge."  It's written by Jim Walsh.

A prosecutor is accusing a judge of trying to derail his effort to seek the death penalty against the man charged with fatally shooting a Gilbert police lieutenant in 2010 and then triggering a 50-mile pursuit that ended in a gunbattle.

Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Juan Martinez argues in a motion that Superior Court Judge Janet Barton should not preside over Christopher Redondo's mental-competency review.

Instead, a judge assigned to the Comprehensive Mental Health Court should hear evidence from mental-health experts and decide if Redondo is competent, meaning that he is capable of understanding court proceedings and assisting in his defense, Martinez wrote.

Karen Arra, a Superior Court spokeswoman, said judges are prohibited by a strict canon of ethics from commenting on pending cases. The next hearing on Redondo's case is scheduled for Nov. 26, and the trial is scheduled for Feb. 25, 2013.

Arra also said that it is not uncommon for trial-court judges to preside over competency-review hearings, even though there is a separate court established to handle such reviews.

Martinez's petition asserts that Barton demonstrated her prejudice against a death sentence by suggesting in July that Martinez offer Redondo a plea to a natural life sentence.

"Specifically, the judge attempted to broker a life sentence although she knew defendant was already serving a natural life sentence for a separate murder in another county," Martinez wrote.

He wrote that he declined to offer Redondo the plea deal because it would allow the defendant to escape further punishment in the Jan. 28, 2010, slaying of Gilbert police Lt. Eric Shuhandler.

The John Ferguson Case in Florida

Today's Tampa Bay Times publishes the editorial, "State shouldn't execute severely mentally ill killer."

The battle over John Errol Ferguson's execution is not about who he is — a cold-blooded killer — but about who we are as Floridians. Ferguson is severely mentally ill and has been that way for more than 40 years. His execution is on hold while his mental state and the legal standards for killing someone who is mentally ill are being argued in federal court. The state and federal standards are in conflict, and the more reasonable federal standard should prevail and prevent from being executed a man who has raging hallucinations and thinks he's the Prince of God.

And:

Ferguson's lawyer, Christopher Handman, is now in a legal race to save the mentally ill man from execution. Only a last-minute reprieve by the federal courts prevented his execution last month. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will review whether the proper constitutional standard for executing the mentally ill is being applied, with briefings scheduled this month.

Florida is embracing an interpretation of competency for execution so pinched that it would virtually extinguish limits on executing the severely mentally ill. The state says Ferguson is aware that he is being put to death and that he committed murder, and is therefore competent to be executed. A trial judge in Bradford County accepted this view, as did the Florida Supreme Court, which failed to block the execution.

But Handman persuasively argues that the standard of competency established by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2007 decision requires a rational understanding of the reason and effect of the execution.

Earlier coverage of John Ferguson's case begins at the link.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes. I added the compentency category index in April.  Earlier posts dealing with competency to be executed are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.  Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

New Details Emerge in John Ferguson's Stay

"Death Row inmate John Ferguson spared in late night legal scramble," is the title of David Ovalle's Miami Herald report.

But just before 6 p.m., Florida Assistant Attorney General Stephen Ake got a phone call from one of Ferguson’s lawyers. Judge Hurley was on the phone for an emergency hearing.

Hurley this time denied Ferguson’s lawyers’ petition, but issued a “certificate of appealability” on whether the Florida Supreme Court made the wrong decision in upholding Judge Glant’s decision.

The “certificate of appealability” legal designation was crucial. Under its rules of procedure, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said it had no choice but to take up the mental health matter.

Around 8 p.m. Tuesday, the Atlanta court issued a stay on Ferguson’s execution.

The Attorney General’s Office, determined to see the execution through, quickly filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a strongly worded motion, Ake accused Ferguson’s lawyers of improper contact with Judge Hurley.

The latest appeal makes a “mockery” of the state’s looking for closure after “35 years of litigation,” Ake wrote.

Handman, Ferguson’s lawyer, shot back, in his reply, that the “mockery” was potentially putting a mentally ill man to death.

“His life hangs in the balance,” wrote Handman, who denied having any improper contact with the judge.

As the clock crept toward midnight Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to say the Atlanta court acted improperly. The stay remained in place.

Now, a new round of paperwork will be filed to the Atlanta appeals court in early November.

Earlier coverage of John Ferguson's case begins at the link.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes. I added the compentency category index in April.  Earlier posts dealing with competency to be executed are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.  Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

Additional Coverage of the Ferguson Stay

"New Stay Granted After Emergency Request Denied By Supreme Court," is the AP report written by Tamara Lush and Curt Anderson.  It's via Huffington Post.

Following a slew of conflicting court rulings, a federal appeals court Tuesday night blocked the scheduled execution of a mass killer convicted of eight slayings that jolted South Florida in the 1970s. The U.S. Supreme Court quickly upheld the stay.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision came during a flurry of legal decisions over claims that 64-year-old John Errol Ferguson suffers from mental illness so severe he cannot be executed. Ferguson, a paranoid schizophrenic with delusions he's the "prince of God," had faced a planned lethal injection at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Florida's death chamber.

The Supreme Court rejected an earlier Ferguson emergency appeal Tuesday – as did the 11th Circuit – but the high court would not agree to the state of Florida's request to overturn the later ruling. The appeals court set a schedule for motions that will likely delay the execution at least until the first week of November, if not longer.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi's office argued in court papers that the late ruling "makes a mockery of the state's compelling interest in finality" in Ferguson's case. He has been on death row for 34 years.

In Washington, the nation's high court noted that Chief Justice John Roberts took no part in the case. There was no further explanation.

Lyle Denniston posts, "Florida execution delayed," at SCOTUSblog.

After the Supreme Court acted, the Eleventh Circuit Court delayed the execution and set a briefing schedule on legal issues surrounding the state Supreme Court’s rejection of the challenge.  The state then promptly asked the Supreme Court to vacate that stay, but the Supreme Court quickly refused to do so.  The Justices’ final order is here, thus leaving the stay intact.

ABA Journal posts, "New Stay Granted for Inmate Claiming ‘Grandiose Delusion’ Bars His Execution," by Debra Cassens Weiss.

The 11th Circuit order (PDF) granting the stay on Tuesday called for briefs on two issues: whether the Florida Supreme Court correctly applied U.S. Supreme Court precedent on competence for execution, and whether the Florida Supreme Court made an unreasonable determination in light of evidence that Ferguson has a history of paranoid schizophrenia and “has a fixed grandiose delusion that he is the 'prince of God.' "

The 11th Circuit order said court rules require it to grant the stay pending consideration of the merits. It acted after a federal district judge granted a certificate of appealability on mental health issues.

A day earlier, the 11th Circuit had vacated a federal judge’s stay in a 2-1 decision. On Tuesday, before the stay was granted, both the Supreme Court and the 11th Circuit had rejected emergency appeals, the Huffington Post says.

Earlier coverage of John Ferguson's case begins at the link.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes. I added the compentency category index in April.  Earlier posts dealing with competency to be executed are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.  Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

Supreme Court Retains ca11 Stay in Ferguson Case

The Supreme Court order in Tucker v. Ferguson is available in Adobe. pdf format.

"Supreme Court stays Fla. inmate's execution," is the UPI report.

The U.S. Supreme Court late Tuesday stayed the execution of a mentally ill inmate on Florida's death row who earlier ate what was to be his last meal.

John Errol Ferguson, 64, had been scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. EDT at Florida State Prison in Starke, where he has been on death row for more than three decades for murdering eight people. That deadline passed without the sentence being carried out as corrections officials awaited word on a last-ditch appeal filed at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

The appeals court blocked the execution before 9 p.m., and the Supreme Court upheld the stay shortly before midnight, CNN reported.

Earlier coverage begins with the preceding post.

11th Circuit Stays Ferguson Execution

AP posts, "New Stay Granted After Emergency Request Denied By Supreme Court," by Tamara Lush and Curt Anderson.  It's via Huffington Post.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday night blocked the scheduled execution of a mass killer convicted of eight slayings that jolted South Florida in the 1970s. Florida officials immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the stay.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision came during a flurry of court rulings over claims that 64-year-old John Errol Ferguson suffers from mental illness so severe he cannot be executed. Ferguson, a paranoid schizophrenic with delusions he's the "prince of God," had faced a planned lethal injection at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Florida's death chamber.

The Supreme Court, which earlier Tuesday rejected Ferguson's emergency appeal, did not immediately rule on the state's motion to lift the stay. The appeals court set a schedule for motions that, if it stands, would likely delay the execution at least until the first week of November.

In Washington, the nation's high court noted that Chief Justice John Roberts took no part in the case. There was no further explanation.

"South Florida mass killer John Errol Ferguson gets last-minute reprieve," is by David Ovalle for the Miami Herald.

A federal appeals court granted a last-minute request Tuesday to block the scheduled execution of John Errol Ferguson, convicted of killing eight people in South Florida in the 1970s.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the 64-year-old Ferguson’s 6 p.m. execution by lethal injection after his attorneys argued he should not be executed because he suffers from severe mental illness.

Florida officials immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the stay. The Supreme Court, which earlier Tuesday rejected Ferguson’s emergency appeal, did not immediately rule on the state’s motion. The appeals court set a schedule for motions that, if it stands, would likely delay the execution at least until the first week of November.

Eartlier coverage of John Ferguson's case begins at the link.

Supreme Court Refuses Florida Stay

"Fla. set to execute mass killer after stay denied," is the breaking news AP report written by Tamara Lush and Curt Anderson.

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied an emergency request for a stay in the scheduled execution of a Florida mass killer who sought a reprieve because of mental illness.

The justices rejected the request Tuesday from 64-year-old John Errol Ferguson, who has been on Florida's death row for 34 years. Ferguson's lawyers contend his mental illness should prevent his execution.

The execution was scheduled for Tuesday evening.

Earlier coverage of John Ferguson's case begins at the link.

ABA President Calls for Stay, Competency Evaluation in Ferguson Case

Laurel Bellows, President of the American Bar Association, has issued a statement today on the Florida case of John Frebguson.  Here's the full text:

The American Bar Association is alarmed that Florida is poised to execute John Ferguson, a man diagnosed as severely mentally ill for more than 40 years, before the constitutionality of his execution is fully evaluated.  Although a district court evidentiary hearing regarding Ferguson’s competency is scheduled for Friday, that could be too late: His execution could occur as soon as today.

A federal trial judge had stayed Ferguson’s execution and ordered the hearing to afford “full, reflective consideration” of Ferguson’s constitutional claims; however, that stay has now been lifted by the court of appeals.  In the interest of justice, it is imperative that Ferguson’s execution be again stayed until there is an opportunity for the federal courts to fully review his insanity claims on the merits and thus ensure that his execution will be constitutional.  To do otherwise would be to risk a terrible miscarriage of justice — one that can never be undone.

Earlier coverage of John Ferguson's case begins at the link.

11th Circuit Lifts Ferguson Stay

The 11th Circuit panel decision in Ferguson v. Florida is available in Adobe .pdf format.

"Mentally Ill Mass Killer's Execution Set After Appeals Court Lifts Stay," is the updated AP report by Curt Anderson.  It's via Huffington Post.

A convicted mass killer from the 1970s is again scheduled for execution Tuesday after an appeals court lifted a last-minute stay that was based on his mental illness. His attorneys sought a last-minute reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court.

The execution of John Ferguson, 64, was tentatively back on for 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison pending a final order from the governor's office, state corrections officials said. Ferguson has been on Florida's death row for 34 years.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday lifted a stay put in place over the weekend by a judge in Florida. Ferguson's lawyers argued he is mentally ill and therefore the Constitution prohibits the state from executing him.

His attorneys sought reinstatement of the stay in an emergency filing Tuesday morning with the U.S. Supreme Court. There was no immediate ruling from the justices.

"Federal appeals courts paves way for Miami man’s execution," is the Miami Herald report by David Ovalle.

A federal appeals court late Monday lifted a district judge’s stay on the execution of Miami’s John Errol Ferguson.

Ferguson, convicted of eight murders in the late 1970s in Hialeah and Carol City, could be executed as early as 6 p.m. Tuesday at Florida State Prison in Starke, according to the state corrections department.

Ferguson has been on Death Row for more than three decades. A long-diagnosed schizophrenic who lawyers say believes is the “Prince of God,” Ferguson was originally scheduled to be executed Oct. 16.

The execution of a severely mentally ill man amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment,” his lawyers say.

And:

“Ferguson has failed to identify clear and convincing evidence upon which [Hurley] could decide that the state court unreasonably determined that Ferguson is competent to be executed,” the judges wrote.

His lawyer, Christopher Handman, said late Monday that he hopes to the U.S. Supreme Court will step in.

CNN posts, "Lawyer files request for emergency stay of execution for Florida man who killed 8," by Nick Valencia.

The attorney for a Florida man convicted of killing eight people asked the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday for an emergency stay of execution, he told CNN.

John Ferguson, a diagnosed schizophrenic, is on death row for the murders in Hialeah and Carol City, Florida, in the late 1970s.

He was scheduled to be executed Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET at the Florida State Prison.

The Supreme Court "has said it’s a ‘miserable spectacle’ to execute the insane," Chris Handman, the Washington D.C.-based attorney for Ferguson, told CNN. “We think the court should intervene to stop that execution from going forward today."

Earlier coverage of John Ferguson's case begins at the link.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes. I added the compentency category index in April.  Earlier posts dealing with competency to be executed are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.  Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

Federal District Judge Issues Stay in John Ferguson Case

"John Errol Ferguson Case: Daniel T.K. Hurley, U.S. District Judge, Grants Stay Of Execution," is the AP report, via Huffington Post.  It's also available from the Washington Post.

A federal judge on Saturday granted a stay of execution for a convicted mass killer in Florida who is mentally ill and was scheduled to be put to death on Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Daniel T. K. Hurley granted the motion for a stay in the case of John Errol Ferguson, who was to be executed Tuesday after 34 years on Florida’s death row.

“The issues raised merit full, reflective consideration,” the court said.

The court will hear three hours of arguments on Ferguson’s habeas corpus petition on Friday, according to his attorneys.

They contend that the Florida Supreme Court, in determining that Ferguson could be executed, relied on an outdated definition of competency that conflicts with a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Ferguson’s attorneys maintain he is insane and that the Constitution prohibits the state from executing him.

"Court halts execution of John Ferguson," is the Miami Herald report.

A federal court on Saturday put the execution of John Ferguson on hold and scheduled arguments for Friday on whether he is, as he contends, insane.

Ferguson, convicted of killing eight people in a 1970s murder spree, had been scheduled to be put to death Tuesday.

Saturday’s ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley in Miami came just three days after the state Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling that Ferguson was sane and eligible to be executed.

Ferguson’s lawyers said that he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and labors under the delusion that he is the “Prince of God.”

Ferguson's attorney Chris Handman issued this statement on the ruling:

“We are pleased that Judge Hurley has stayed the execution of Mr. Ferguson and has concluded that the important constitutional issues raised by Mr. Ferguson’s habeas petition merit full consideration.  In order for the state to execute him, Mr. Ferguson must have a rational understanding of the reason for, and effect of, his execution.  A man who thinks he is the immortal Prince of God and who believes he is incarcerated because of a Communist plot quite clearly has no rational understanding of the effect of his looming execution and the reason for it.”

Ferguson’s filing in the Miami federal court followed the Florida Supreme Court’s determination that Ferguson is competent and may be executed.  In his habeas petition, Mr. Ferguson seeks to prevent his execution on the grounds that he is currently insane and that the Eighth Amendment therefore prohibits the State from killing him."

Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano writes, "Insanity infects both the mass killer and the justice system."

What price are you willing to pay for justice?

Would you sacrifice compassion? A small slice of morality?

Would you defy a landmark provision within the U.S. Constitution? If you're unsure, consider this:

The state of Florida was scheduled to execute John Errol Ferguson on Tuesday but a federal judge granted an emergency stay on Saturday.

Ferguson, 64, was convicted of eight murders in South Florida in 1978, admitted to two more while in jail, and evidence suggests he also is responsible for the death of a St. Petersburg couple in 1977.

So, no, empathy does not run deep for the man.

The issue, however, is whether Ferguson is sane enough to be put to death.

Earlier coverage of John Ferguson's case begins at the link.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes. I added the compentency category index in April.  Earlier posts dealing with competency to be executed are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.  Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

An Update From Florida

"US Supreme Court rejects Fla. killer's 1st appeal," is the AP report by Bill Kaczor, via the CT Post.

Lawyers for a convicted mass killer who is mentally ill filed a new appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday shortly after the justices declined to hear an earlier case.

In the rejected case, John Errol Ferguson, who is set for execution next Tuesday after 34 years on Florida's death row, challenged the procedure that Gov. Rick Scott used to deny his clemency request.

The high court also denied a stay of execution in that case. It did not explain either decision.

Ferguson's lawyers also filed a separate appeal of a ruling Wednesday by the Florida Supreme Court. The state justices upheld findings by Scott and a trial judge that Ferguson is legally competent to be executed even though he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.

"Mr. Ferguson lacks a rational understanding of the reason for his death sentences and the effects of it," said defense lawyer Ben Lewis. "He believes he faces a death sentence because of a communist plot related to his role as the 'prince of God.'"

The Supreme Court order in Ferguson v. Florida is available in Adobe .pdf format.  Just to be clear, the legal matter that is still before the Court is the appeal from the Florida Supreme Court ruling on the state's standard regading competency to be executed, which differs from the standard articulated in Ford v. Wainwright.

SCOTUSblog posts, "Court denies stay of execution in Florida case," by Amy Howe.

This afternoon the Court declined to stay the execution (and denied the petition for certiorari) of John Ferguson, a Florida death row inmate convicted in 1978 for his role in eight murders on two separate occasions.  In urging the Court to stay his execution and grant review, Ferguson — whose attorneys describe him as having a “history of serious mental illness” and who had been diagnosed as a “paranoid schizophrenic” — had argued that he had been denied due process in his clemency proceedings because (among other things) he never received a clemency hearing.  Ferguson also argued that his execution, after thirty-four years on death row, would violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.  Ferguson and his attorneys contended that executing him now would not serve either of the two goals of punishment — deterrence and retribution — advanced by the Court in cases such as Roper v. Simmons and Atkins v. Virginia.

The stay was originally presented to Justice Thomas, who serves as the Circuit Justice for the Eleventh Circuit; he then referred it to the entire Court.  Justice Breyer — who has in the past expressed some sympathy for Eighth Amendment claims like Ferguson’s — indicated that he would have granted the application for a stay.  The Chief Justice did not participate in Ferguson’s case.

Earlier coverage of John Ferguson's case begins at the link.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes. I added the compentency category index in April.  Earlier posts dealing with competency to be executed are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.  Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

A Schizophrenic on Death Row

That's the title of an editorial in today's New York Times, and it begins our latest roundup of coverage of John Ferguson's case.

The Florida Supreme Court decided on Wednesday that the state can proceed with the execution next week of a 64-year-old inmate named John Ferguson. His lawyers immediately said that they will ask the United States Supreme Court to stay the execution and to review the case on grounds that Mr. Ferguson is mentally incompetent and that executing him would violate his constitutional rights as defined by the court in two earlier decisions.

The court must review the case. At issue are not only Mr. Ferguson’s life but also two differing interpretations of what constitutes competence: one Florida’s, the other the Supreme Court’s.

Mr. Ferguson believes that he is the Prince of God and that he is facing execution not for murders he committed but because of a conspiracy against him for being the prince. He believes that he cannot be killed and that he has “inner ears” so he can hear God whisper instructions. All of this is consistent with his being a paranoid schizophrenic, as he was diagnosed 40 years ago and many times since, including earlier this month.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that it is unconstitutional to execute someone who lacks the “ability to comprehend the nature of the penalty.” In 2007, the court clarified that a “prisoner’s awareness of the state’s rationale for an execution is not the same as a rational understanding of it” and that evidence of psychological dysfunction may result in a “fundamental failure to appreciate the connection” between his crimes and his execution.

Yet this is not the way Florida sees it. Florida law requires only “awareness” — that Mr. Ferguson knows he committed murders and is set to be executed. On that basis, a trial judge ruled last Friday that Mr. Ferguson was competent and could be executed, and the Florida Supreme Court upheld that view, saying no “stricter standard” of competence is required.

The Florida Supreme Court ruling in Ferguson v. Florida is available in Adobe .pdf format.

Christopher Handman, Ferguson's attorney, issued, "Response to Denial Today at Supreme Court of Florida."  Here's the complete text:

“We are disappointed that the Florida Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that John Ferguson is competent to be executed. He is not. As the trial court explicitly found, Mr. Ferguson’s ‘Prince of God’ delusions are ‘genuine’ and the two expert doctors’ testimony was ‘credible and compelling as it relates to [his] documented history of paranoid schizophrenia.’ We will promptly file a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to stay Mr. Ferguson’s execution and hear his case.

“Florida’s laws on determining mental competency for execution squarely conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Panetti v. Quarterman (2007). And the Circuit Court’s rushed, abbreviated hearing violated Mr. Ferguson’s due process rights.

“Both the Florida Supreme Court and the Circuit Court in Bradford County failed to apply the correct constitutional standard under Panetti. They found that Mr. Ferguson was competent to be executed because he had a rudimentary factual awareness of his impending execution.  But so did the prisoner in Panetti, but the Supreme Court there held that that was not enough.  Just as in Panetti, Mr. Ferguson’s gross delusions that he is the Prince of God and is invincible deprive him of any “rational understanding” of the reason for his execution and the effect of that execution.

“It is undisputed that Mr. Ferguson is a paranoid schizophrenic. Over nearly 50 years, multiple State doctors have diagnosed him as profoundly mentally ill and suffering from hallucinations and delusions. No justice will be served by executing a very sick, elderly man.”

"South Florida mass killer John Ferguson faces execution on Oct. 23 after losing another appeal," is the AP filing, via the Republic.

Gov. Rick Scott has rescheduled the execution of a mass killer for Oct. 23 after he lost another appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.

Scott acted shortly after the justices Wednesday upheld a lower court decision that John Errol Ferguson is competent to be executed.

Ferguson is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court and seeking a stay of execution there.

"Florida high court upholds decision on executing Miami mass murderer," is David Ovalle's Miami Herald report.

Justices said there was “competent, substantial evidence” to support Bradford Circuit Judge David Glant’s ruling that Ferguson understands why he is to be executed — for eight Miami-Dade murders in the late 1970s.

Ferguson, 64, had originally been scheduled to die by lethal injection this week at the Florida State Prison in Bradford. A new date and time must now be set.

Defense attorneys have maintained for decades that Ferguson is severely mentally ill and his execution would be “cruel and unusual punishment.”

And:

In his order, Glant acknowledged that Ferguson has a history of schizophrenia but that he exists now trouble free in prison and “there is no evidence that he does not understand” why he is to be executed.

The judge also noted that while Ferguson claims he is the “Prince of God” and will be seated at the “right-hand” of God after his death, his beliefs are not “significantly different than beliefs other Christians may hold,” Glant wrote.

Ferguson’s defense attorneys have criticized the court’s ruling. They filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, including testimony from two university professors who say Ferguson’s religious beliefs are not “normal.”

Earlier coverage of John Ferguson's case begins at the link.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes. I added the compentency category index in April.  Earlier posts dealing with competency to be executed are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.  Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

ABA President Speaks Out on the John Ferguson Case in Florida

"ABA denounces court's decision on execution," is by Laurel Bellows, the President of the American Bar Association, in today's Tallahassee Democrat.

Our great American system of justice is demeaned when we execute the profoundly mentally ill. Nonetheless, a Florida trial court has ruled that the scheduled Thursday execution of John Ferguson should proceed, despite its conclusion that Ferguson’s mental illness is so profound that he hears and sees things that aren’t real and suffers from serious delusions.

This condition has persisted for more than three decades and has included years of involuntary confinement in mental hospitals and treatment with antipsychotic medications.

The American Bar Association has long been concerned about the special vulnerability of the mentally ill in our criminal justice system. These concerns follow hundreds of years of common law tradition that has consistently held that offenders with severe mental illness must be treated differently from other offenders.

"Serial killer’s execution won’t happen until after stay expires," is David Ovalle's Miami Herald report.

John Errol Ferguson, on Death Row for eight murders in Miami-Dade in the 1970s, won’t be executed Thursday.

The Florida Department of Corrections initially said last week that Ferguson, 64, would be killed by lethal injection Thursday at 6 p.m., after a two-day delay mandated by the state’s high court pending last-minute appeals.

But on Monday, the corrections department clarified that an execution date won’t be set until after the Florida Supreme Court’s stay on the execution expires Thursday afternoon.

Earlier coverage of John Ferguson's case begins at the link.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes. I added thecompentency category index in April.  Earlier posts dealing with competency to be executed are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.  Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

More Coverage on the Florida Case of John Ferguson

"Nothing good about execution of mentally ill man," is the title of Fred Grimm's Miami Herald column.

Like I said, there’s nothing positive to be said about John Errol Ferguson. He was a horror. His execution, scheduled for Thursday, might even bring a perverse notion of justice for two of his accomplices in the Carol City massacre. They’re long gone. Marvin Francois went to the electric chair in 1985. And Beauford James White, who never fired a shot that day, was electrocuted two years later.

But the righteous sense of retribution that’s supposed to come with killing a killer might go lacking in Ferguson’s case, given that the guy they’re strapping onto the death gurney thinks the Florida Department of Corrections is only preparing him for heavenly ascension, and that he’ll soon be heading back our way as the “Prince of God,” the very heir apparent to the creator (with whom he has had many intimate conversations) on a heavenly mission to bust up a big communist plot.

Ferguson is crazy. He’s delusional. He’s a paranoid schizophrenic. He lacks what his lawyer calls “rational appreciation of the death penalty.” Even for fervent advocates of capital punishment, that’s got to take a bit of the fun out of execution day.

His madness was not some recent, feigned malady, contrived during his 34 years on death row to keep him out of the death chamber. Court records document that Ferguson was diagnosed back in 1965 with “visual hallucinations.” After a series of felony arrests, and a gunshot wound to the head, he was trucked off to state mental institutions in 1971, where a psychiatrist decided he was a paranoid schizophrenic with “severely damaged ability to distinguish right from wrong.” Another doctor that year recommended a long commitment in a mental hospital rather than bother with a criminal trial, given that Ferguson suffered “from a major mental disorder which prevents him from aiding counsel.”

In 1973, he had “deteriorated to a psychotic state.” In 1974, he was found “grossly psychotic.” And yet another doctor said Ferguson “did not know right from wrong nor the nature and consequences of his acts.” And in 1975, a court-appointed doctor echoed that finding, adding “The degree of irrationality coupled with a rather impulsive, explosive and aggressive nature makes him a rather dangerous person both to himself and to others.” Another declared Ferguson a “paranoidally disturbed person with many somatic delusions and many ideas of a rather bizarre and persecutory nature.”

And finally a diagnosis in 1975 came with a warning that reads, in retrospect, like prophecy. “He has a long-standing, severe illness which will most likely require long-term inpatient hospitalization. This man is dangerous and cannot be released under any circumstances.

Yet, in an act of bureaucratic insanity, less than a year later Ferguson was released from state custody, this diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who was delusional and impulsive and explosive and aggressive and dangerous

The Guardian posts, "Florida inmate found fit to be executed despite history of mental illness," by Ed Pilkington, reporting from New York.

David Glant, a judge with Florida's eighth circuit, has found that John Ferguson, 64, can be given lethal injections next Thursday despite a US supreme court injunction that prohibits executions of the insane. In his concluding remarks, the judge agrees with the prisoner's defence lawyers that Ferguson is a paranoid schizophrenic who genuinely believes he is "Prince of God".

The judge accepts that the prisoner has a "long history of mental illness" and finds there is no evidence to support the prosecution contention, made over several years, that Ferguson was pretending to be mentally ill in order to avoid execution. Yet he goes on to conclude that "there is no evidence that his mental illness interferes, in any way, with his 'rational understanding' of the fact of his pending execution and the reason for it".

Astoundingly, the judge goes on to say that the prisoner's "grandiose delusion" of himself as being akin to Jesus at the point of his resurrection is in fact "relatively normal Christian belief". He writes: "There is no evidence that Ferguson's belief as to his role in the world and what may happen to him in the afterlife is so significantly different from beliefs other Christians may hold so as to consider it a sign of insanity."

Ferguson's legal team has appealed the ruling to the Florida supreme court and an initial hearing is likely to be held on Monday. Pending a final appeal to the US supreme court, the highest judicial panel in the land, the prisoner he will face execution by 4pm on Thursday.

"This is a guy with long-standing mental health issues that stretch over four decades, with 30 different doctors having diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic, including Florida state and court-appointed doctors. And yet he is sane enough to be executed?" said Ben Lewis, one of Ferguson's defence lawyers.

Earlier coverage of John Ferguson's case begins at the link.

Competency to Be Executed at Issue in Florida Case

It's well established that the mentally ill and severely mentally ill are over-represented in prisons and death rows.  Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases involving competency to be executed.  In lay terms, is someone so mentally ill and delusional that they do not understand they are about to be executed and/or the actual reason they are facing execution.

John Ferguson has a pending execution date in Florida, and the competency question is being reviewed by the courts.  Let's begin with a statement from Ferguson's attorney, "on Court's Finding that He is Delusional but Competent for Execution."  Here's the full text of Christopher T. Handman's statement:

"Today, Judge Glant of the Circuit Court of the Eighth Judicial Circuit found, based on what he called 'credible and compelling' testimony from John Ferguson's experts that John (1) is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, (2) has genuine 'Prince of God' delusions, and (3) is not feigning or malingering any of these psychoses.  Despite his findings that John is severely mentally ill, the judge ruled that John is nonetheless mentally competent for execution because he knows, as a factual matter, that the State plans to execute him.

"The Supreme Court's decision in Panetti v. Quarterman requires a rational understanding of why an individual is being put to death and the consequences of the death penalty.  Nationally-recognized experts in neuropsychiatry and forensic psychology examined John and testified that he lacks a rational understanding of why he is being put to death and the effect of the death penalty. The Judge believed them.  And for nearly 50 years, Florida's own psychiatrists have diagnosed John as schizophrenic, psychotic and severely mentally impaired.

“It is impossible to fathom that the State can constitutionally put to death a man who thinks he is the Prince of God and who believes he has a destiny of being the right hand of God and returning to purify earth after the State tries to kill him.  That simply is not a rational appreciation for what's about to befall him. We are confident that either the Florida Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court will prevent this unconstitutional execution from going forward. "

"Judge rules convicted mass killer competent to be executed, appeal to Fla. Supreme Court next," is the AP report, via the Republic.

A judge has ruled a convicted mass killer is legally competent to be executed next week after spending the last 34 years on death row.

Circuit Judge David Allen Glant on Friday ruled against 64-year-old John Errol Ferguson in Starke. Ferguson is being held at nearby Florida State Prison.

Defense lawyer Christopher Handman said he will appeal to the Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee.

Ferguson was convicted of killing eight people in South Florida. Six victims died in a drug related, execution-style mass killing in Carol City in 1977.

"Trial court: Miami mass murderer competent for execution next week," by David Ovalle in the Miami Herald.

John Errol Ferguson is mentally competent to be executed for the murders of eight people in Miami in the 1970s, a Bradford judge ruled Friday.

Ferguson, 64, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday at 6 p.m. at the Florida State Prison in Bradford County. Appeals will continue in the coming days.

Defense attorneys have maintained for decades that Ferguson is severely mentally ill and his execution would be “cruel and unusual punishment.” Bradford Circuit Judge David Glant listened to two days of testimony this week before issuing his ruling Friday.

Glant acknowledged that Ferguson has a history of schizophrenia but that he exists now trouble free in prison and “there is no evidence that he does not understand” that he is to be executed for eight murders.

The judge also noted that while Ferguson claims he is the “Prince of God” and will be seated at the “right-hand” of God after his death, his beliefs are not “significantly different than beliefs other Christians may hold,” Glant wrote in his order.

Criminologist Risdon Slate writes the OpEd, "There is no purpose in our executing the insane," for the Tallahassee Democrat.  He teaches at Florida Southern College.

Next week, Florida plans to execute a 64-year-old, severely mentally ill man named John Ferguson. For nearly 50 years, state-appointed doctors have diagnosed Ferguson as schizophrenic, psychotic or hallucinating. Now — days away from the death chamber — state doctors say he’s sane and competent for execution.

If the governor or the courts do not intervene, John Ferguson’s execution will be an unconstitutional act. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that it is cruel and unusual punishment to execute an individual who is insane and lacks a rational understanding of why he is being put to death and the effect of the death penalty.

his has been the law in the United States since our nation’s beginnings, carried over from centuries of English common law. Citing the many reasons for the rule throughout history, Justice Anthony Kennedy explained that “the execution of an insane person simply offends humanity … it provides no example to others … it is uncharitable to dispatch an offender into another world, when he is not of a capacity to fit himself for it … madness is its own punishment … and executing an insane person serves no retributive purpose.”

As far back as 1965, state doctors diagnosed Ferguson with hallucinations. Before his current incarceration, he spent nearly a decade in state-run mental hospitals, where seven different doctors diagnosed him as severely mentally ill and dangerous. All the doctors agreed that Ferguson should not be released, but these warnings were not heeded. Ferguson was released, and he was convicted of the tragic crimes for which he currently faces a death sentence.

And:

The governor should spare Ferguson’s life and commute his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of release. The courts should look at the evidence dating back to 1965 and recognize, as multiple state doctors and prior courts have, that Ferguson is severely mentally ill and not competent to be executed.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes. I added thecompentency category index in April.  Earlier posts dealing with competency to be executed are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.  Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

5th Circuit Lifts Jonathan Green Stay

"Appeals court lifts Green's execution stay," is the AP report via the Montgomery County Courier.

A federal appeals court has lifted a reprieve for a convicted killer in Texas, reinstating his scheduled execution hours before it was to be carried out for the slaying of a 12-year-old girl more than decade ago.

The state attorney general's office had asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the stay of execution given earlier this week to condemned prisoner Jonathan Green. The 44-year-old was convicted of the abduction, rape and strangling of Christina Neal in 2000.

He's set to die Wednesday evening in Huntsville.

The issue is now before the Supreme Court.

Earlier coverage of Jonathan Green's case begins at the link.  Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes.

Texas has carried out 9 executions this year; a total of 486 post-Furman executions since 1982.  Texas has the nation's most active death chamber and accounts for more than 37% of the  executions in America's death penalty states.

Houston's KPFT-FM will host Execution Watch on the web and it's HD radio broadcast signal beginning at 6:00 p.m. (CST), Thursday.

According to TDCJ, seven additional executions have been scheduled by Texas district court.  Two executions have already been set for 2013.

News Coverage of Oral Arguments in Competency Cases

The transcripts of oral arguments in Tibbals v. Carter and Ryan v. Gonzales are at the links.

"Supreme Court Considers Indefinite Stays of Execution," is Adam Liptak's report in today's New York Times.

In a pair of cases argued Tuesday, the Supreme Court considered what to do when people convicted of capital crimes are mentally incompetent and so unable to help their lawyers with challenges to their convictions and sentences.

The lower courts in the two cases had imposed indefinite stays, saying the proceedings should wait until the prisoners regained their mental competency. There appeared to be little support among the justices for that approach. Some of them appeared to sense gamesmanship from defense lawyers effectively seeking to make sure that death sentences are never carried out.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said he was skeptical of “a mechanism that will permit stays in virtually every capital case.” The mechanism was particularly problematic, he said, because “a lot of district judges and a lot of court of appeals judges don’t like the death penalty and will go to some length to prevent the imposition of that sentence.”

Justice Stephen G. Breyer appeared to think that critique too harsh, though he seemed to agree that indefinite stays are improper. “Trial judges run their trials,” he said. “You know, that’s what they’re hired for. And once we make it clear” that stays “shouldn’t go on forever, why can’t we trust them to do their job?”

The Supreme Court has allowed the execution of death-row inmates so long as they are, in Justice Antonin Scalia’s words on Tuesday, “aware of what is being done and why it’s being done.”

The standard for being able to assist a lawyer is much tougher, he said, meaning that the stays imposed by the lower courts effectively overrode the execution standard.

"Supreme Court debates whether inmate incompetence can delay appeals in death penalty cases," is the AP filing, via the Washington Post.

The Supreme Court seemed inclined Tuesday to eliminate the authority of federal judges to indefinitely delay a death row inmate’s federal appeals in the hope that the convict would become mentally competent enough to help his or her lawyer with the appeals.

Inmates appealing state death sentences to federal court have a right to a lawyer. But the courts have never said whether the inmates have to be mentally competent enough to help their lawyers with their federal appeals.

Lawyers for Arizona death row inmate Ernest Gonzales and Ohio death row inmate Sean Carter say the answer is yes, and urged the high court Tuesday to rule that federal judges have discretion to hold up proceedings until the inmates are ready. “The court’s answers should reflect the important principle that no individual should lose potentially meritorious claims because of mental illness,” said lawyer Scott Michelman, who represented Carter.

But justices spent considerable time talking about the differences in a proposed delay of six or nine months, or much as a year before ordering that the trial move forward.

SCOTUSblog analysis is, "Argument recap: Judges get no respect," posted by Lyle Denniston.  Here's the beginning:

Well into an argument before the Supreme Court Tuesday morning, Justice Stephen G. Breyer blurted out, in quite a loud voice, “WHY?”  He immediately apologized for the boisterousness of the question.  It was, though, entirely appropriate in the circumstances: he was protesting why nearly everyone seemed to have totally lost confidence in the capacity of federal district judges to use discretion wisely.   Those judges, indeed, were almost totally orphaned in two arguments on how to handle a federal habeas case when the state prisoner involved may be mentally incompetent.

There were essentially two issues before the Justices in the related cases of Tibbals v. Carter (docket 11-218) and Ryan v. Gonzales (10-930): when should a federal court put a hold on a state prisoner’s habeas claim when a competency question arises, and how long should such a delay be?  Justice Breyer may have been the only one on the bench who seemed to feel very strongly that this was something district judges could easily handle, and be trusted to do so.   Most of the Court was pursuing some limits that it could impose on those judges.

The two cases reached the Court on state appeals protesting indefinite delays issued by lower courts in habeas cases in which state inmates were contesting their convictions for murder.  In each case, because of claims of incompetence, the stay was to last until the inmate’s mental health had been sufficiently restored that he could cooperate with his lawyer in pursuing his claims.  Lawyers for the states of Ohio and Arizona and a lawyer for the federal government contended that there should never be indefinite stays, no matter what the circumstances, and in no case should a stay be longer than, say, a year.

It did not take long in the hearings for it to become clear that most of the Justices were sympathetic to the idea of fairly strict limitations, and that the Court itself probably would never again do what it did in 1967 in the case of Rees v. Peyton: impose a stay in a death penalty case involving an incompetent individual, with the delay remaining in effect for some twenty-eight years, lifted only when the man died in prison.   The case of Melvin Davis Rees hung over Tuesday’s session like an uninvited house guest.

The SCOTUSblog case files for Tibbals v. Carter and Ryan v. Gonzales contain all briefing.

"Supreme Court Considers Competency in Death Penalty Cases," at Stateline - Pew Center on the States, by Maggie Clark.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday (October 9) heard arguments from Ohio and Arizona that federal judges should not be allowed to indefinitely stay a death sentence even if there are questions about an inmate’s mental competency.

“The state has a powerful interest in the finality its conviction and sentence,” argued Alexandra Schimmer, Ohio’s solicitor general, in the Tibbals v. Carter case challenging a stay imposed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. “Ohio has been standing at the ready for 10 years to defend the judgment of its state courts in this case.”

A key issue for the court to decide is whether death row defendants have the right to assist in their defense during their federal habeas corpus claim, which is filed after they’ve been sentenced to death by a state court. Arizona and Ohio argued Tuesday that there is no specific right for a defendant to assist his or her lawyer, and federal courts should not put a death penalty case on hold indefinitely while attempts are made to restore a defendant back to mental competency.

ABA Journal posts, "High Court Appears Skeptical of Indefinite Stays for Competency in Capital Appeals," by Debra Cassens Weiss.

In oral arguments on Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court appeared unlikely to uphold indefinite stays when inmates lack competency to aid their lawyers in capital appeals.

Lawyers for death-row inmates Ernest Gonzales of Arizona and Sean Carter of Ohio argued that inmates must be mentally competent to assist their appellate lawyers, the Associated Press reports. The justices, however, focused on a second question: the propriety of indefinite stays in such cases.

The Arizona Daily Star profiles the defense attorney in Ryan v. Gonzales in, "Neto's Tucson: Attorney to get day in court - the big court."  It's by Ernesto Portillo Jr.

Leticia Marquez, a federal public defense attorney, is a bit nervous this weekend as she preps for a Tuesday court case. It will be unlike any case she's had before.

She'll stand in front of nine jurists - the U.S. Supreme Court.

"It's a real big deal," said Marquez last week in a telephone call from Washington, D.C., where she is preparing her case. That's an understatement.

It's historic for this University of Arizona graduate and daughter of Mexican immigrants.

Marquez, 43, might be the first Tucson Latina attorney to argue a case before the highest court in the country. Nationally, she could be the 16th Latina in history, according to a February article in the National Law Journal.

Earlier coverage of the two cases begins at the link.  Related posts are in the competency index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.

Stay of Execution Over Flawed Competency Hearing

"Judge stays execution of young girl's killer," is Mike Tolson's Houston Chronicle report.

A federal district judge on Monday blocked the execution of Jonathan Green, two days before he was set to die for the 2000 murder of a 12-year-old Montgomery County girl.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas ruled that a state mental competency hearing violated due process standards and that the judge who conducted it applied incorrect standards for determining competency for execution.

"The inadequacies of the state court's process and the resulting constitutional violations require this court to stay Green's execution," Atlas said in her 17-page order.

And:

Green's lawyers argued the hearing before Michalk was held so quickly after it was granted - two days later - that medical personnel from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice who had treated Green were not available to testify.

They asked for a delay so those workers could be brought to court. The judge denied the request, which Atlas found unreasonable.

"Considering the heavy reliance the state court's opinion places on its credibility determinations of the two experts and the notable absence of any reference to the TDCJ medical records in the state court findings, the state court's denial to Green of the opportunity to present the TDCJ witnesses casts serious doubt on the fundamental fairness of the competency proceeding," she wrote.

Atlas said her order deals only with the fairness of the process.

"Because the state court unreasonably applied Supreme Court precedent and failed to provide due process, a stay of execution is necessary," Atlas' order stated. "The court here is concerned only with the question whether Green is entitled to a stay of execution and not with the ultimate question of whether he is incompetent to be executed."

"Texas judge stays execution of man who raped, killed 12-year-old," is the Los Angeles Times report by Molly Hennessy-Fiske.

A federal judge in Houston on Monday stayed the execution of a Texas man and granted him a competency hearing days before he was to be put to death for the abduction, rape and strangulation of a 12-year-old girl.

Soon after the ruling, the Texas Attorney General’s Office filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. A spokesman for the attorney general declined to comment.

And:

The judge noted that Green’s competency was still an open question that required a hearing — not because he failed to establish that he was incompetent, but because “he was prevented from doing so" through a lack of due process.

Green's Houston-based lawyer, James Rytting, praised the ruling as "a thorough decision."

"Houston judge stays Jonathan Green's execution," is the AP filing by Micahel Graczyk, via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office filed notice Monday that it will appeal a federal judge's order halting an execution scheduled for Wednesday of a Montgomery County man condemned for the abduction, rape and strangling of a 12-year-old girl in 2000.

Attorneys for the state office rushed to file a one-paragraph notice with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans hours after U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas in Houston granted a stay to Jonathan Green, 44.

The full appeal will be filed today, the attorney general's office said. Green's lawyers would then have the opportunity to respond to the state's arguments.

Atlas' ruling came in an appeal from Green's attorneys challenging a state judge's decision two years ago that Green was mentally competent for execution for the slaying of Christina Neal.

And:

Atlas said her ruling was concerned "only with the question whether Green is entitled to a stay of execution and not with the ultimate question of whether he is incompetent to be executed."

"It is clear from the record that, at a minimum, the trial court prevented Green from presenting testimony by treating mental health professionals, relied on an order solicited from and drafted by the state to which Green had no opportunity to object, and applied at least one incorrect legal standard," Atlas ruled.

Judge Atlas' order in Green v. Thaler is available in Adobe .pdf format.

Earlier coverage of Jonathan Green's case begins at the link.  The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes.  Two cases involving competency to be executed are being heard in the Supreme Court this morning.

Supreme Court to Review Competency Issues

"Argument preview: Sorting out competency," is Lyle Denniston's post at SCOTUSblog.  Here's the introduction:

At 10 a.m. Tuesday, the Supreme Court will begin hearing two cases — for a total of eighty minutes – on issues surrounding claims of incompetency by individuals convicted of state crimes, and the effect such claims may have on federal court review of their cases.  In the first case, Ohio’s state solicitor general, Alexandra T. Schimmer, will represent state officials, and Scott Michelman of the Public Citizen Litigation Group in Washington, D.C., will represent the prisoner, Sean Carter.  In the second case, the U.S. government will have ten minutes in the middle of the argument, largely to support the state officials in the cases.  Speaking for the government will be Ann O’Connell, an assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General.  Representing the state of Arizona in the second case will be its attorney general, Thomas C. Horne.   Speaking for the prisoner, Ernest Valencia Gonzales, will be an assistant federal public defender, Leticia Marquez, of Tucson.

The SCOTUSblog case files for Tibbals v. Carter and Ryan v. Gonzales contain all briefing.

Earlier coverage of the cases begins at the link.  Related posts are in the competency index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.

Federal Judge to Rule on Inmate Competency in South Dakota Case

"In court, Moeller admits ’90 rape, murder of girl," is the AP report filed by Dirk Lammers.  It's via the Mitchell Daily Republic.

Donald Moeller regularly reads the Bible while on death row, but the graying 60-year-old is forgoing mercy and taking an Old Testament approach to his fate.

For the first time, Moeller admitted Thursday that he kidnapped, raped and killed 9-year-old Becky O’Connell more than 20 years ago. He told a federal judge that what he did was evil and that he has to pay for it.

“The law has spoken,” said Moeller, who was twice convicted of first-degree murder in the 1990 slaying. “I killed. I deserve to be killed.”

U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Piersol ordered Moeller to appear at Thursday’s hearing, which was supposed to deal with the constitutionality of South Dakota’s one-drug capital punishment procedure. But the proceedings have become mired in a series of bizarre motions that pit Moeller’s state-court lawyer against Arkansas-based public defenders arguing the federal case.

Piersol listened to arguments about the attempt to dismiss but not specifics on the lethal injection protocol. He took the dismissal under advisement and will rule later. Moeller is scheduled to be executed in late October or early November.

The Arkansas lawyers contend that the execution method using pentobarbital violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, but there are few details about those issues as many of the recent filings have been kept under seal.

Today's Sioux Falls Argus Leader reports, "Donald Moeller: 'I killed. I deserve to be killed'."  It's by Steve Young.

Convicted murderer Donald Moeller told a U.S. district judge Thursday he is ready to die and wants all attempts stopped to halt his execution the week of Oct. 28.

Now Judge Lawrence Piersol must decide whether he thinks Moeller is competent to make that decision. And the judge promised to do so in short fashion, though he didn’t offer a specific timetable.

In a 90-minute hearing at the federal courthouse, Piersol questioned the 60-year-old Moeller extensively about his desire to move quickly to execution for the 1990 rape and murder of 9-year-old Becky O’Connell.

Moeller and his state-appointed lawyer, Mark Marshall of Rapid City, have filed a stipulation asking that a constitutional challenge to South Dakota’s execution method by injection be dismissed so the legal maneuvering can end and the execution be carried out.

But Arkansas lawyers appointed at the federal level to represent Moeller want to continue with the execution method challenge and argued to Piersol that their client isn’t competent to make the decision because of his abused childhood and years of institutionalization. They even asked for a guardian — Moeller’s stepmother, Agnes Becker — to be appointed to make litigation decisions for him.

Argus Leader columnist Patrick Lalley writes, "Reflect on the death penalty."

South Dakota history will be cast this month between the grinding wheels of criminal justice.

The ramped-up campaigns for Congress, or whether to increase the sales tax by a penny, will occupy most of our attention as the election nears. Meanwhile, the state’s second and third executions in the modern era are scheduled for completion. It was more than five years ago that Elijah Page died for the beating death of Chester Poage in the Black Hills. The state hadn’t carried out the death penalty in more than 60 years at that point.

Now they’re stacked like split logs outside the hunting lodge.

The exact dates haven’t been announced, but Eric Robert is scheduled to die the week of Oct. 14 and the Donald Moeller the week of Oct. 28.

Waiting in the wings are Rodney Berget, who helped Robert kill a prison guard last year; Briley Piper, who was involved in the Poage beating with Page in 2000; and our longest-serving death-row inmate, Charles Rhines, convicted of killing a doughnut shop clerk in Rapid City in 1992.

Evidence suggests that few folks much care who lives and dies at the pen.

On the day of the last execution, July 11, 2007, I visited several locations in Sioux Falls to gauge reaction. For the most part, but for a few protesters on North Drive and a round of Hail Marys at the Cathedral, there was little evidence that the state was taking the grim step.

It’s no surprise that South Dakotans support the death penalty.

What’s worrisome is these occasions pass with indifference.

Earlier coverage from South Dakota begins at the link.

Emily Bazelon Previews the Coming Supreme Court Term

"Human Rights, the Death Penalty, and Affirmative Action. What will the Supreme Court decide in this term’s first big cases?" is Emily Bazelon's post at Slate.

Next Monday, the Supreme Court will begin what promises to be an action-packed fall. As I get ready to step into the inimitable heels of Dahlia Lithwick—she is on book leave for the year, and yes, you should pity me for covering for her—I’m looking forward to three cases in the first half of October.

And:

Ryan v. Gonzales and Tibbals v. Carter, Tuesday, Oct. 9: We are not supposed to execute mentally insane people in this country. The Supreme Court said so in 1986. At the time, no state allowed such an execution; as Justice Thurgood Marshall pointed out, British judges back in the 17^th century worried about the “miserable spectacle” of “extreme inhumanity and cruelty” presented by executing a “mad man.” That’s still the law, though it’s worth worrying over the low standard of competence courts use. Apart from that, what exactly is supposed to happen if a defendant is sentenced to death and then found to be incompetent, because of mental illness, to help his lawyer press his appeals?

Two federal appeals courts, the 6^th Circuit and the 9^th Circuit, have essentially found that defendants have a right to be competent during the federal court proceeding called habeas corpus—basically, a defendant’s last-ditch chance to get off death row. The 9^th Circuit stayed proceedings indefinitely in the case of Ernest Valencia Gonzales, who is psychotic, and who killed a man in the course of a burglary. In Ohio, a district court similarly ordered an indefinite stay for Sean Carter, sentenced to die for killing his adoptive grandmother, and then found to be delusional with schizophrenia. The state of Ohio, which wants to execute Carter, imagines courts handing out lots more delays under “extraordinarily loose standards,”  bringing the death penalty to a halt in the state. This is not a crazy concern: The backdrop here is the case of Melvin Davis Rees, who got a competency hearing and a stay courtesy of the Supreme Court in the mid-1960s—and died in prison in 1995, as Lyle Denniston points out on Scotusblog.

The Obama administration has weighed in against a rule that favors indefinite stays for death row inmates whose mental illness makes them incompetent. It’s too much to ask to stop all these cases, the government says. The American Psychiatric Association is on the other side, arguing that, for the sake of fairness, people who can’t help their lawyers shouldn’t be marched through their appeals. The American Bar Association wants a flexible standard for granting a stay, depending on the level of the defendant’s impairment and the circumstances of the case. It’s hard for me to imagine a lot of defendants who are deemed incompetent who could possibly work well with their lawyers—most of them are probably hallucinatory and delusional. That may not move a majority on the Supreme Court, though.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes.  In April, I added the competency category index.  Earlier posts dealing with compentency to be executed are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in the 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.

Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

Plea Gives Victims Chance to Heal in Peace

That's the title of an editorial in today's Arizona Republic on the Loughner plea agreement.

Jared Loughner's plea deal is a chance for those he hurt to continue healing in peace. It was the least painful option for the families of those he killed and the survivors of his horrible actions.

There was no question of guilt.

This seriously mentally ill young man admitted crimes we all know he committed. In doing so, he escaped the death penalty. He will spend his life in prison for killing six people and wounding 13 others, including then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

This is justice.

It is also compassion for those whose lives he shattered.

And:

It is incorrect to suggest Loughner is getting off easy. There is nothing decent to be gained by seeking the execution of a young man whose actions were controlled by untreated mental illness. A young man who became "human," as the psychologist put it, because he finally got treatment for his schizophrenia. There is nothing easy about a 23-year-old facing life in prison.

What happened in the courtroom was an aching step toward closure. As Giffords' husband, Mark Kelly, put it: The "pain and loss" Loughner caused "are incalculable."

But, Kelly said, "avoiding a trial will allow us -- and we hope the whole southern Arizona community -- to continue with our recovery and move forward with our lives."

There is no happy ending here. But this plea agreement was the best option available.

David Kaczynski has posted, "A sign of progress?"  He's an anti-violence activist and Executive Director of New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.  Here is his statement, in full:

We learned yesterday that the man responsible for killing six people and injuring many others, including a member of Congress, in a shooting rampage in Arizona in 2011 will not receive the death penalty. Jared Loughner, who is diagnosed with schizophrenia, yesterday entered a plea that will keep him imprisoned for the rest of his natural life.

In accepting the plea deal, prosecutors cited the wishes of victims and their families to avoid the re-traumatizing ordeal of a high-profile, long-running criminal trial. In contrast, in 1998 my brother Ted Kaczynski - diagnosed with schizophrenia in five separate psychiatric evaluations - faced a capital trial in which federal prosecutors pushed hard for the death penalty. A plea agreement for a life sentence was offered only after the trial started to unravel around Ted's mental illness, and after his family refused to keep quiet about the barbarity of trying to execute a mentally ill man who'd been turned in by his family members.

What few people realize is that the overwhelming majority of criminal defendants who have serious mental illness are ruled legally sane (just as Loughner was yesterday) and thus they are equally exposed to the death penalty as would be any defendant without mental illness.

What we see in our current legal system is a huge disconnect between the modern medical understanding of mental illness and a badly outdated legal definition of insanity. As a result, more than 100 people with the most serious types of mental illness have been executed in the US since 1976, according to a 2003 study published by Amnesty International. That disheartening number includes several psychotic defendants who acted (and often acted-out) as their own defense attorneys at trial.

Yesterday, however, sanity prevailed. Lawyers, victims and their families, and the Attorney General all quietly agreed that justice would not be served by seeking a death sentence for someone as sick as Jared Loughner.

Let us hope that, at last, we have turned a corner in appreciating that criminal defendants diagnosed with severe and persistent mental illness should be treated as a separate category; and that our commitment to protecting society and to holding offenders accountable does not mean that we have to kill people whose judgment was compromised by severe illness.

Earlier coverage of the Loughner plea agreement begins at the link.  An earlier OpEd by Kaczynski on mental illness and the criminal justice system is also available.

Arizona Shooter Ruled Competent, Pleads Guilty

"Loughner Pleads Guilty in 2011 Tucson Shootings," is the New York Times report by Fernanda Santos.

Jared L. Loughner pleaded guilty on Tuesday to carrying out a shooting rampage here last year that left six people dead and 13 others wounded, including Gabrielle Giffords, then a member of the House of Representatives. For the crimes he committed, he will receive an automatic sentence of life in prison

“I plead guilty,” Mr. Loughner said in a slurred monotone, seated with his back arched and his hands clasped over his legs.

He would repeat the words 19 times. As part of his plea, prosecutors agreed to dismiss 30 other charges against him.

Mr. Loughner’s plea came soon after Judge Larry A. Burns found him mentally competent to admit to the crimes.

Under the terms of the deal brokered by his defense team and the prosecution, he will spend the rest of his life in prison, and be spared a possible death sentence. The deal also means that the victims’ relatives and the shooting’s survivors will not have to endure a long trial with an uncertain outcome.

At the hearing, Mr. Loughner looked pale and skinny under his khaki prison uniform, offering short answers to questions asked by the judge — “Has anyone put unfair pressure on you” to plead guilty? “Do you understand all the provisions that are in this plea agreement?”

From a corner of the courtroom, his mother, Amy Joanne Loughner, wept quietly.

In a statement earlier on Tuesday, Ms. Giffords’s husband, Mark E. Kelly, said they had been in contact with the United States attorney’s office as the negotiations over Mr. Loughner’s plea evolved.

“The pain and loss” caused by the rampage “are incalculable,” Mr. Kelly said. “Avoiding a trial will allow us — and we hope the whole Southern Arizona community — to continue with our recovery and move forward with our lives.”

The AP report is, "Loughner pleads guilty to Ariz. shooting."  It's written by Elliot Spagat and Bob Christie.

"He's a different person in his appearance and his affect than the first time I laid eyes on him," said Judge Larry A. Burns, who then accepted the plea agreement and added that he found it to be in the best interest of everyone involved.

The outcome was welcomed by some victims, including Giffords herself, as a way to move on.

"The pain and loss caused by the events of Jan. 8, 2011, are incalculable," Giffords said in a joint statement with her husband, Mark Kelly. "Avoiding a trial will allow us - and we hope the whole Southern Arizona community - to continue with our recovery."

Experts had concluded that Loughner suffers from schizophrenia, and officials at a federal prison have forcibly medicated him with psychotropic drugs for more than a year.

Court-appointed psychologist Christina Pietz testified for an hour about how she believes Loughner became competent. Loughner listened calmly without expression. His arms were crossed over his stomach, lurched slightly forward and looking straight at Pietz.

A plea agreement offers something for both sides, said Quin Denvir, a California defense attorney who has worked with Loughner attorney Judy Clarke on the case against unabomber Ted Kaczynski.

Prosecutors would avoid a potentially lengthy and costly trial and appeal, knowing that the defendant will be locked up for life.

Clarke managed to avoid the death penalty for other high-profile clients such as Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph, who bombed abortion clinics in the late 1990s and Atlanta's Olympic park in 1996.

The decision to spare Loughner a federal death sentence makes sense, said Dale Baich, a federal public defender in Phoenix who handles capital case appeals and isn't involved in the case.

"As time went on and there were numerous evaluations, I think everybody had a better understanding of Mr. Loughner's mental illness." Baich said. He added: "It appears that he will need to be treated for the rest of his life in order to remain competent."

The Arizona Republic reports, "Loughner found competent, pleads guilty in mass shooting."  It's by Michelle Ye Hee Lee, Amy Wang and Michael Kiefer.

Loughner's plea included guilty pleas for the murders of U.S. District Judge John Roll and Giffords staffer Gabe Zimmerman. It also included guilty pleas for the attempted assassination of Giffords and the attempted murders of Giffords employees Pam Simon and Ron Barber. Barber succeeded Giffords as U.S. representative from Tucson.

All are federal employees.

He also pleaded guilty to causing the deaths of the others killed at Giffords' constituent event at a grocery store just outside of Tucson. Because it was an official congressional event, it was a federally protected activity.

The shooting rampage left six dead and 13 wounded.

The maximum sentence for the crimes would be mandatory life in prison without eligibility for parole.

There was stillness in the courtroom as the judge read the names of those killed, wounded or placed in danger during the shootings.

Loughner's plea agreement carries multiple life sentences, according to his lawyer, Judy Clarke.

In making his pleas to the judge, Loughner admitted that he planned to use his weapon to kill Giffords and others attending the Congress on Your Corner event. He also admitted intending to injure or kill others attending the event.

Another part of the plea agreement required Loughner to waive ownership of his Glock pistol, his ammunition and the 12-gauge shotgun seized at shooting scene.

He also must forfeit any future money he may be offered to write his story or give interviews.

Earlier coverage of the Loungher plea agreement begins at the link.

High Profile Arizona Case Nears Plea Agreement

"Loughner plea deal involves some risk," is the Arizona Republic report by Michael Kiefer.

The evidence against Jared Loughner in the mass shooting in Tucson last year is overwhelming, and if he were tried and found guilty, a jury could sentence him to death.

Still, sources close to the case said Saturday that a possible deal is in the works in which Loughner would plead guilty and be sentenced to life in prison. News reports said Loughner, who was diagnosed as schizophrenic, is now competent to stand trial, although a federal judge would have to approve.

The news raised questions about why federal prosecutors would weigh such a deal in a high-profile crime that claimed the lives of six, wounded 13 and outraged the nation. Federal and state prosecutors have sought the death penalty for defendants accused of murdering even one person.

And:

Loughner's struggles with mental health have played out in court and in court filings. He exploded in one of his early hearings in U.S. District Court. His lead attorney, Judy Clarke, whose specialty as an attorney is in keeping high-profile defendants off death row, argued against his forcible medication and the matter went to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which eventually allowed the medicating. Clarke maintained that the drugs used to control his schizophrenia could also deaden his personality and feelings so as to affect his appearance at trial and negatively influence a jury.

"If Loughner is competent now, the question is whether he can remain competent during the stress of a lengthy trial," said Dale Baich, assistant federal public defender in Phoenix, who specializes in death-penalty appeals in federal court but is not involved in Loughner's defense.

Just as Clarke wants to save Loughner from being executed, federal prosecutors, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Wallace Kleindienst, may want to cut off the risk that a jury would find Loughner not guilty by reason of insanity.

"Competence Was Linchpin for Both Sides in Tucson Case," is the New York Times report by Fernanda Santos.

From the outset, the case against Jared L. Loughner carried risks for both the prosecution and the defense.

Legal experts said there was ample evidence to prove that Mr. Loughner was the man behind last year’s shooting rampage in Tucson, which killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Gabrielle Giffords, a member of the House of Representatives who was holding a constituent event in the parking lot of a supermarket.

But a conviction was far from certain. Even if Mr. Loughner was deemed legally sane to stand trial, jurors could conclude that he was not when the shootings occurred, the legal experts said.

His lawyers were hoping to push for an insanity defense, but if convicted, Mr. Loughner, 23, would most likely face a death sentence. Instead, he is scheduled to plead guilty on Tuesday, after psychiatric evaluations and notes from his court-ordered treatment at a federal psychiatric hospital in Springfield, Mo., established that he was fit to stand trial, according to two people briefed on the developments who were granted anonymity to discuss a legal proceeding.

The plea would bring an abrupt resolution to a case that for some time seemed ensnarled in doubts over Mr. Loughner’s mental health and a seemingly steadfast resolve among prosecutors to bring him to trial.

“I think everybody concluded it’s a better resolution,” said A. Bates Butler III, a former federal lawyer in Arizona who has been closely following the case.

A plea deal would carry none of the costs, dangers or emotional toll of a trial, he said, and would probably spare Mr. Loughner from the death penalty.

The case is referenced in this post.

NAMI on the Marcus Druery Case

"He needs to understand," is by Mike Fitzpatrick and Greg Hansch in the Houston Chronicle.  Fitzpatrick is the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness; Hansch, the policy coordinator of NAMI-Texas.

The editorial "Texas execution stay a wise move" (Page B11, Tuesday), rightly argues that Marcus Druery deserves a hearing on his mental competency to determine if he is capable of understanding why he could be executed.

As the nation's largest grassroots organization focused on mental illness, we are gravely concerned about the potential execution of an individual who is reportedly experiencing psychiatric symptoms so severe that he may not understand why he is being executed.

Druery has been repeatedly diagnosed as having schizophrenia by the state's mental health professionals. He is reported to suffer from delusional thoughts and auditory hallucinations. He hears voices, believes that his cell is wired to broadcast his thoughts, and thinks his food is being poisoned.

He displays such severe symptoms that mental health experts for the state and for the defense all agree on his diagnosis.

The death penalty does not function as a deterrent or a punishment if the person executed does not understand why he is being put to death. The law recognizes this and has rightly prohibited those deemed mentally incompetent from being executed. We applaud the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for staying Druery's execution, and we respectfully urge the court to find that Druery is entitled to full and fair consideration of his psychiatric condition and his competence.

Earlier coverage of Marcus Druery's case begins at the link.

Texas Execution Stay a Wise Move

That's the title of an editorial in today's Houston Chronicle on the Marcus Druery case.  Here's the beginning:

Last Friday, capping a flurry of activity, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay of execution to convicted murderer Marcus Druery, who had been scheduled to be put to death tomorrow for a Brazos County murder and robbery in 2002.

At issue was Druery's mental competency to understand the reason for his execution. Both state and private mental health professionals had diagnosed Druery as severely psychotic and therefore incompetent to be executed. But last Tuesday, Brazos County District Judge J. D. Langley denied a motion to hold a full hearing on Druery's competency.

On Wednesday, Kate Black, Druery's attorney, stating that her client's execution "would violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel or unusual punishment," appealed that denial to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, arguing that her client "suffers from a psychotic disorder that renders him incompetent to be executed." Two days later, the court stayed the execution, writing that it had "determined that further review is necessary."

We applaud the court's decision, as far as it goes. We fervently hope that their review will persuade the justices to remand the case back to the Brazos County court for a competency hearing. Execution is irrevocable, and should never be invoked as long as a shred of doubt exists as to its constitutionality in any given case.

Prosecutors are not contesting the diagnosis of schizophrenia, nor claiming that Druery is malingering. They argue that despite his mental illness, he is competent for execution. But no court has ever ruled on Druery's competency. His attorneys are simply asking that their client not be put to death until they have had a chance to demonstrate, in a full and fair hearing, that he is not competent to be executed.

Salon posts, "Marcus Druery: Another questionable Texas execution."  It's by Rania Khalek.

Black says Druery’s awareness of his upcoming death sentence is not the same as having a “rational understanding” of why the state wants to execute him. As evidence, she points to the Supreme Court decision in Panetti v. Quarterman, a case brought forward by another psychotic inmate who was nearly executed by the state of Texas.

Panetti had schizoaffective disorder, causing delusions that led him to believe the state wanted to kill him to stop him from preaching. Though Panetti recognized the factual rationale behind his death sentence — that he was found guilty of murdering his ex-wife’s parents — the Supreme Court held that “[a] prisoner’s awareness of the State’s rationale for an execution is not the same as a rational understanding of it.”

The court reasoned that executing a prisoner who “has no comprehension of why he has been singled out and stripped of his fundamental right to life” undermines the concept of retributive justice. “There’s no retribution for someone being executed when they think it’s for something that has nothing to do with the actual crime,” explained Black.

Druery’s failure to understand his legal circumstances was verified by Diane Mosnik, a neuropsychologist specializing in schizophrenia who was hired by the defense with court funding to conduct a comprehensive psychological assessment of Druery in May. “Because of his inflexible, psychotic and delusional interpretation of his circumstances, Mr. Druery does not have the capacity to rationally understand the connection between his crime and his punishment,” concluded Mosnik. “Although [Mr. Druery] has a factual awareness that an execution date has been scheduled for the crime for which he was tried, he does not believe that he will be executed because of his illogical, fixed, and firmly held delusional belief system.”

Black and her co-counsel, Gregory W. Wiercioch, one of the lawyers who argued the Panetti case to the Supreme Court, immediately appealed Langley’s ruling to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, requesting that it be overturned and Judge Langley be required to hold a competency hearing. Late Friday, the CCA granted a temporary stay pending further review of the evidence.

Earlier coverage of Marcus Druery's case begins at the link.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes.  In April, I added the competency category index.  Earlier posts dealing with compentency are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in a 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.

Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

Will Texas Execute a Psychotic Man?

That's the title of Andrew Cohen's latest Atlantic post.  It' subtitled, "One prison doctor after another has diagnosed Marcus Druery as severely mentally ill. Does the Constitution permit the death penalty anyway?"  Here's the beginning:

Some things are relatively simple about the case of Marcus Druery, a convicted murderer whom Texas officials plan to execute Wednesday evening at the state's death chamber in Huntsville. The details of the Halloween 2002 crime for which Druery was convicted are horrible, for example, and there is no pending legal claim that Druery is innocent or was wrongly convicted. This time, at least, no one seems to doubt that the police, the prosecutors, the witnesses, and the jurors all got the right man.

But there is one thing about the Druery case that is very complicated, indeed. No one seems to dispute that Druery now suffers from delusions and a psychotic disorder that doctors have consistently labeled as a form of schizophrenia. Nevertheless, despite these diagnoses, and despite United States Supreme Court precedent that precludes the execution of prisoners "who are unaware of the punishment they are about to suffer and why they are to suffer it," Texas still intends to execute Druery.

If the courts permit, that is. Late Friday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the Druery execution "pending further order." The unpublished ruling means that state appellate judges want to look more closely at defense claims that Druery has shown enough evidence of incompetency to preclude his execution. The central legal question here is: Can a state execute an "Undifferentiated Type" schizophrenic? Put another way, how mentally ill does someone need to be to be too mentally ill to be executed?

If the substance of the Druery appeal has to do with a single man's mental health, the process that led us here is illustrative of the deeply flawed nature of Texas' capital punishment system. We see in this case a judge more angry about delays than he is committed to accuracy. We see prosecutors with risible disdain toward defense counsel. And we see it all in a case in which the condemned man has been judged to be seriously mentally ill over and over again by the state's own doctors.

Earlier coverage of Marcus Druery's case begins at the link.

Related posts are in the competency and mental illness category indexes.  In April, I added the competency category index.  Earlier posts dealing with compentency are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in a 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.

Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

There are several notable posts on the question of competency to be excuted:

• The Criminally Mentally Ill
• Scholarship - Mental Illness & Competency to Be Executed

CCA Stays Marcus Druery Execution Over Competency

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Order in Druery v. Texas is available in Adobe .pdf format.

Druery's attorney, Kate Black, issued the following statement:

"We are pleased that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the execution of Marcus Druery to allow for careful consideration of our request for a competency hearing. The State has never contested the fact that Mr. Druery suffers from a psychotic disorder, which has been diagnosed by the State's own experts. Executing Mr. Druery, who lacks a rational understanding of his punishment, would stand in clear violation of the Constitution. We are hopeful the Court will find that Mr. Druery is entitled to a full and fair hearing to present the evidence of his severe psychosis and establish his incompetence to be executed."

"Texas death row inmate has Aug. 1 execution stayed," is the AP report, via KTRK-TV.

A Texas death row inmate who was scheduled to die next week had his execution stayed Friday by the state's highest criminal court, which wants to review a petition that argues he is not mentally competent to be executed.

And:

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered its stay after a lower court rejected Druery's petition. An attorney for Druery, Kate Black, said he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was deemed incompetent by a defense expert. She says executing Druery would violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that prisoners can't be executed unless they're aware of the punishment and know why they're being punished.

"Appeals court delays Marcus Druery exceution," by Maggie Kiely for the Bryan-College Station Eagle.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Friday afternoon granted a stay of execution for Marcus Druery, a 32-year-old death row inmate from Bryan who was scheduled to receive a lethal injection Wednesday.

Druery killed and robbed 20-year-old Skyyler Browne on Halloween 2002 before lighting Browne’s body on fire and dumping it in a stock pond.

He was sentenced to death in 2003 by a Brazos County jury.

Druery’s lawyers filed an appeal Wednesday asking the appellate court to review District Judge J.D. Langley’s decision to deny Druery a competency hearing as his attorneys had requested.

The appeals court “determined that further review is necessary” and issued the stay “pending further order,” according to a response from the panel of nine judges.

Defense attorneys Kate Black and Greg Wiercioch of the Texas Defender Service have argued that their client meets the criteria for incompetency and doesn’t have a “rational understanding” of why he’s to be executed, which would make him ineligible for the death penalty.

"Appeals court halts execution over competency issue," by Cindy George for the Houston Chronicle.

Brazos County District Attorney Bill Turner said prosecutors do not dispute that Druery has a mental disorder, but they believe he's competent enough to face execution.

"We anticipated the appellate courts would take a look at it before the execution proceeded," Turner said in an interview Friday.

Druery, who has been on death row for almost six years, was to be executed for the 2002 robbery-murder of Skyyler Browne.

"Bryan Murderer's Execution Put on Hold," on KBTX-TV.

It's unclear when the appeals court will conduct its review.

The last Brazos County killer to be executed was Ynobe Matthews in 2004.

Earlier coverage of Marcus Druery's case begins at the link.

The Cautionary Instruction

That's the title of an OpEd in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette subtitled, "Three states, three approaches and three very different results."  It's by Matt Mangino, former district attorney of Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, and a member of the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole.

In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Panetti vs. Quarterman.   The court was asked to decide whether a condemned prisoner had a "rational understanding" of his crime and punishment for purposes of execution.

The court also addressed the retributive purpose of capital punishment, "it might be said that capital punishment is imposed because it has the potential to make the offender recognize at last the gravity of his crime and to allow the community as a whole [to] affirm its own judgment that the culpability of the prisoner is so serious that the ultimate penalty must be sought and imposed."

Cases pending before courts in Texas, Oregon and Georgia point to the absurdity of death penalty litigation. In Georgia, the court stayed the execution of a man with an IQ of 69, not because he is mentally retarded, but because a state court wants to examine a newly implemented execution protocol. In Texas, the court said a schizophrenic killer is competent and his execution should proceed. In Oregon, where the governor granted a reprieve to all condemned killers, one man is demanding to be executed.

Mangino then goes into the cases of Warren Hill, Marcus Druery, and Gary Haugen; and:

Three states, three different approaches and three very different results. The news this week points to the absurdity of a 33 state approach to capital punishment.

Earlier coverage of the three cases is linked above.  Related posts are in the competency, mental illness, and mental retardation category indexes.  In April, I added the competency category index.  Earlier posts dealing with compentency are available under the Scott Panetti index.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in a 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.

Coverage of Scott Panetti's case begins at the link.  More on the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in  Panetti v. Quarterman is via Oyez.

There are several notable posts on the question of competency to be excuted:

• The Criminally Mentally Ill
• Scholarship - Mental Illness & Competency to Be Executed

An Arizona Volunteer

Today's Arizona Republic reports, "Hausner insists he's sane in handwritten letter," by Michael Kiefer.

In a handwritten letter received Thursday by The Arizona Republic, convicted "Serial Shooter" Dale Hausner insisted he is sane enough to be granted his request that he be executed without undergoing lengthy appeals.

"The State of AZ wanted me to get the death penalty before and during my trial. I was found guilty and given six death sentences," he wrote. "Now that I want to get executed, suddenly my mental state is in question. ... I am not insane, I am of sound mind. I simply wish to get the punishment handed down to me, but more quickly. I mean really, what's a guy got to do to get snuffed out?"

He punctuated the last sentence with a smiley face.

Before Hausner can be executed, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge must determine if he is competent to make the decision.

Related posts are in the competency, mental illness, and volunteer category indexes.

Volunteer is the term applied to inmates on death row who waive their appeals.

Marcus Druery's Lawyers Take Competency Case to CCA

"Lawyers for Mentally Ill Inmate Seek Stay of Execution," is by Brandi Grissom's post at the Texas Tribune.

Lawyers for death row inmate Marcus Druery filed a request with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals late Wednesday for a stay of execution for their client. They argue that executing Druery, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, would be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. 

On Wednesday, the trial judge in Druery's case, J.D. Langley, also unsealed the inmate's medical record from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Among the records is a report from a May 2012 examination by Dr. Diane Mosnik, a neuropsychologist who wrote that Druery "suffers from severe, active psychotic condition, meeting criteria for a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia." 

The severity of his mental illness, Dr. Mosnik wrote, prevents Druery from having a understanding that he is going to be executed Aug. 1.

"Although he has a factual awareness that an execution date has been scheduled for the crime for which he was tried, he does not believe that he will be executed because of his illogical, fixed, and firmly held delusional belief system," she wrote.

The Bryan-College Station Eagle reports, "Stay of execution filed in Druery case."  It's by Maggie Kiely.

Attorneys for 32-year-old Marcus Druery — a Texas death row inmate from Bryan scheduled to be executed next Wednesday — filed a stay of execution with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals this week.

Druery was sentenced to death by a Brazos County jury in 2003 for killing 20-year-old Skyyler Brown by shooting him in the head on Halloween 2002 on Druery’s family’s ranch. After murdering Browne, Druery robbed him of cash, a cellphone, pager and marijuana before setting his body on fire and dumping it in a nearby stock pond.

The request to postpone the execution was sent late Wednesday, a day after District Judge J.D. Langley denied motions filed by Druery’s attorneys asking that a hearing be held and for two independent psychiatrists to be appointed to assess if their client is competent for execution.

Defense attorneys Kate Black and Greg Wiercioch with the Texas Defense Service have argued that while Druery may have a “factual understanding” that he’s supposed to be executed next week, he doesn’t have a “rational understanding” about why he’s been sentenced to the death penalty.

"Bryan Killer's Lawyers Seek Stay of Execution From Appeals Court," is the KBTX-TV report.

With just six days to go before his scheduled execution, Marcus Druery's lawyers have officially filed an appeal to a higher court trying to stop the lethal injection.

And:

Druery was convicted of the 2002 murder of Skyyler Browne, but doctors have said he suffers from schizophrenia. Medical records were unsealed Wednesday by Langley noting Druery's condition.

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, an inmate must know they are being executed and why before they are put to death. Otherwise, it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

Earlier coverage of Marcus Druery's case begins at the link.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in a 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.  Related posts are in the competency and mental illness indexes.

Additional Coverage of the Marcus Druery Ruling

"Hearing Denied for Inmate Set for Execution Aug. 1," is Brandi Grissom's Texas Tribune report.

Brazos County District Court Judge J.D. Langley on Tuesday denied a motion to hold a full hearing on the claims of Marcus Druery's lawyers that he is incompetent for execution because he is severely mentally ill.

Kate Black, who represents Druery and is a staff attorney at the Texas Defender Service, said that the convicted murderer does not have a rational understanding of his upcoming execution and the she was disappointed with the judge's decision.

And:

Black said Druery's lawyers will appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Druery is scheduled to be executed Aug. 1.

The AP filing is, "Texas judge refuses to stop execution next week," via KTRK-TV.

A Brazos County judge has refused to stop the execution next week of a convicted murderer described by his lawyers as mentally incompetent for the death penalty.

State District Court Judge J.D. Langley rejected requests Tuesday by attorneys for Marcus Druery that his Aug. 1 execution be postponed to allow for a competency hearing. Langley says the legal threshold for a hearing hasn't been reached.

Dreury's attorneys say they'll appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled prisoners can't be executed unless they're aware of the punishment and know why they're being punished.

Two news reported noted yesterday have been expanded.  "Judge rejects motions to forestall Druery execution," by Maggie Kiely in the Bryan-College Station Eagle, and the Houston Chronicle report, "Killer called schizophrenic, but judge says execution can proceed," by Allan Turner, have additional coverage.

Earlier coverage of Marcus Druery's case begins at the link.

The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in a 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez.  Related posts are in the competency and mental illness indexes.