Diane Jennings writes, "Killer who tore out own eyes fuels Texas debate on insanity defense." Her article appeared in the Sunday edition of the Dallas Morning News.
Everyone agrees Andre Thomas is crazy.
In 2004, he cut out the hearts of his wife and her two children and pocketed them. Before his murder trial, he plucked out his right eye. In January, while on death row, he ripped out his other eye and swallowed it.
Thus far, courts say Thomas is not insane.
His case is a classic example of the complexities of Texas' insanity defense law – and why some mental health advocates are pushing to change it. Several bills pending in the Texas Legislature would do just that.
With medication and treatment, Thomas eventually was found mentally competent to stand trial, because he could communicate and assist his attorney in his defense. At trial, he was found to be sane at the time of the crime because he knew the difference between right and wrong. And he may be found competent to be executed if he understands what execution means and why he is being killed.
Thomas is "clearly 'crazy,' " a judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals wrote in a concurring denial of his appeal last month, "but he is also 'sane' under Texas law."
Death penalty opponent Maurie Levin, an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, is appalled. "There is something just horribly wrong with a system that permits somebody as severely mentally ill as Andre Thomas to be found competent to stand trial or sane at the time of that crime," said Levin, who consulted with Thomas' defense attorney.
"We need to change the law," said Brian Shannon, a Texas Tech law professor, because a mentally ill person may know their conduct is wrong but be unable to fully comprehend the situation because the illness affects his "emotional state and thinking and reasoning ability.
And:
Shannon
supports bills pending in the Legislature to broaden the law, in all
cases, not just capital cases, to say that a defendant must
"appreciate," not just "know," the difference between right and wrong
and that the wrong should be a moral one, not just legal.
Such changes, which have been proposed in past sessions, would bring
Texas closer to the federal standard on insanity. Supporters are
hopeful for passage this time, but for now, the Texas law is similar to
that in other states. "Texas is right within the norm,"
said Bruce Winick, who teaches law at the University of Miami, and
psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the medical school. "People
aren't going to say, 'Oh, there goes Texas again.' "
Texas, like many states, narrowed the insanity defense in the 1980s
amid outrage over John Hinckley's acquittal in the attempted
assassination of President Ronald Reagan. Hinckley has been confined to
a mental hospital since 1982. Shannon said Texas law also
should change to inform jurors what happens to defendants found not
guilty by reason of insanity. They do not "just walk free," he said.
A bill authored by Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, would allow
jurors to be told that such defendants are sent to a mental hospital if
acquitted. Long-term hospitalization is not guaranteed, but "even if
someone gets well and is discharged, there's still oversight by the
court," Shannon said. Prosecutors oppose efforts to broaden the not guilty by reason of insanity defense.
Earlier coverage of the Thomas case begins here.
Florida's Panama City News Herald has, "NEWS ANALYSIS: In court, insanity can be hard to prove," by David Angier.
Dr. Harry McClaren, a forensic psychologist who works locally has evaluated hundreds of criminal defendants since 1981, said the legal definition of insanity is "a very hard one to meet."
"A person has to be pretty bad off not to know what they're doing, its consequences or whether it's right or wrong," McClaren said. "It's easier for a (jury) to make a good decision about whether someone was aware of the consequences of their actions instead of trying to put themselves in the place of the person and come to a reliable analysis of their lack of ability to control their behavior."
Three Panama City convicted murderers in the last six months have claimed they were represented ineffectively because their lawyers did not pursue the insanity defense. Alvin Merring, Aaron Scott Garner and Timmy Pilgreen all claimed insanity should have been their defense.
All three had the same lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Walter Smith, who has heard that argument for years from people, usually his clients, who have no idea what legal insanity is.
To be legally insane, a person at the time of the offense has to be afflicted with a mental infirmity that has eliminated their ability to appreciate what they were doing or the consequences of their actions, or that their actions were wrong.
And:
Smith scoffed when recently asked about his opinion of the insanity defense.
"There is no insanity defense," he said.
For decades, Florida defense attorneys used a common understanding of the insanity defense that wasn't really defined until recently. Then, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an Oregon case that there was no constitutional right to an insanity defense and Oregon could abolish it. Following that, in 2003, the Florida Legislature revamped the wording of the definition of insanity as it applies to the defense.
Smith said the standard, which essentially is that a person would have to be unaware that killing another person would offend society's mores, is so unrealistic that no defendant will ever be able to use the defense again.
"If you know that killing is wrong or offends society, you're not insane," Smith said. "You can believe that God may be telling you to kill this person, but you're still not insane. The only people who are going to meet that test - people who are totally disoriented as to time, place and self, people who don't even know what they've done much less that it's wrong, are going to be found incompetent to go to trial anyway."
Related news is in the mental illness category index.
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