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:
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