Post by sclcookie on Jun 3, 2006 2:33:23 GMT -5
Judging Whether a Killer Is Sane Enough to Die
Scott Panetti, a death row inmate in Texas, understands that the state
says it intends to execute him for the murder of his wife's parents.
Scott Panetti being interviewed in 1999 in prison in Texas.
But Mr. Panetti, 48, who represented himself in court despite a long and
colorful history of mental illness, says he believes that the state's real
reason is a different one. He says the state, in league with Satan, wants
to kill him to keep him from preaching the Gospel.
That delusion has been documented by doctors and acknowledged by judges
and prosecutors. It poses what experts call the next big question in death
penalty law now that the Supreme Court has barred the execution of
juvenile offenders and the mentally retarded: what makes someone too
mentally ill to be executed?
A 3-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth
Circuit, in New Orleans, recently said Mr. Panetti was sane enough to die.
The full court will soon decide whether to hear the case.
Mr. Panetti, in prison now almost 14 years for the killings in 1992 in the
quaint Hill Country city of Fredericksburg, has long seemed to exemplify
madness, addressing himself to the jury in his trial in 1995 as "the
born-again April Fool," a schizophrenic healed by God.
In and out of mental institutions 14 times and addicted to drugs and
alcohol since he almost drowned as a child and was nearly electrocuted by
a power line, Mr. Panetti wore cowboy costumes to court, delivered
rambling monologues, put himself on the witness stand and sought to
subpoena the pope, Jesus and John F. Kennedy.
Jurors were clearly alienated and took little more than an hour to reject
his insanity defense.
They found that Mr. Panetti knew right from wrong and so deserved the
death penalty. That is a separate question from whether his mental illness
should bar his execution.
Two decades ago, the United States Supreme Court in Ford v. Wainwright
ruled that the Eighth Amendment prohibited the execution of the insane.
Since then, lower courts have struggled to find a way to apply that
principle in practice.
The state and federal courts that have heard Mr. Panetti's case have said
that a bare awareness of the fact of impending execution and the stated
reason for it is enough.
"In Texas," said Greg Wiercioch, a lawyer with the Texas Defender Service
who has consulted with Mr. Panetti's defense, "if you cast a shadow on a
sunny day, you're competent to be executed."
Other courts require more. Relying on a concurring opinion in the Supreme
Court decision, they say the inmate actually has to perceive the
connection between the crime and the punishment.
The 3-judge panel in Mr. Panetti's case acknowledged that he was mentally
ill with what has been diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder and that he
thus might lack a rational understanding of his fate. But the panel
nonetheless ruled that he was competent to be executed because he was able
to understand the stated basis for his execution.
His new lawyers dispute that.
"He completely scoffs at the notion that it's the State of Texas trying to
execute him," said Keith Hampton, a lawyer from Austin who filed the
latest appeal with a co-counsel, Michael C. Gross of San Antonio. "He
thinks it's the demons and evil ones."
Legal and medical experts estimate that hundreds of people with
schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses are on death rows around
the nation.
Courts have spared the lives of 7 inmates based on the 1986 decision, the
Texas Defender Service said.
David R. Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston who has met
more than 75 death row inmates, visited Mr. Panetti at his lawyers'
request. "Of all the people I have met on death row, he's the
gold-medal-crazy winner," Professor Dow said.
On Sept. 8, 1992, Mr. Panetti broke into the home of his in-laws, Joe and
Amanda Alvarado, and shot them to death in front of his estranged 2nd
wife, Sonja, and his 3-year-old daughter, Amanda, known as Birdie.
Taking on his defense, and calling himself as a witness, he argued that he
had been taken over by an alter ego he called Sarge Ironhorse.
"Sarge boom boom," Mr. Panetti testified. "Sarge is gone. No more Sarge.
Sonja and Birdie. Joe, Amanda lying kitchen, here, there blood. No, leave.
Scott, remember exactly what Sarge did. Shot the lock. Walked in the
kitchen. Sonja, where's Birdie? Sonja here."
Prosecutors, their medical experts and the courts agreed that Mr. Panetti
suffers from mental illness. Judge Sam Sparks of Federal District Court in
Austin found in 2004 that Mr. Panetti's illness was characterized by
"grandiosity and a delusional belief system in which he believes himself
to be persecuted for his religious activities and beliefs."
Judge Sparks said that was not enough to spare Mr. Panetti.
Others agree.
Robert Blecker, a law professor at the New York Law School and a cautious
supporter of the death penalty, said Mr. Panetti's execution could serve
the goal of retribution.
"He knows what he did," Professor Blecker said. "He knows what the state
is about to do to him, and why. For the retributivist, the past counts. It
counts for us, and for us to be retributively satisfied, it must also
count for him."
Prosecutors made the same point in a brief to the Fifth Circuit last year.
"All that is required to avoid the Eighth Amendment prohibition against
cruel and unusual punishment is that the petitioner factually understand
the reason for this punishment," the prosecutors wrote.
Executions of inmates who exhibited signs of madness are not unusual. In
1992, Arkansas executed Ricky Ray Rector not long after he put aside the
dessert of his last meal to eat later.
In March, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in
Richmond, Va., split, 7 to 6, over whether Percy L. Walton could be
executed, notwithstanding his delusional belief that after his death he
would "come back as a better person" and "get a Burger King." A majority
said this was proof that Mr. Walton understood he would be executed.
"That a person believes that he will have an 'afterlife,' however strange
his views of that 'afterlife' may be," Judge Dennis W. Shedd wrote,
"necessarily suggests he believes his existing life will end."
The laws of most states, based on English common law, have long banned the
execution of the insane.
"The reasons for the rule are less sure and less uniform than the rule
itself," Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote in the 1986 case.
Some judges say the "miserable spectacle" of such executions simply
offends humanity. Others say retribution is not served by executing
someone who cannot understand why he is being put to death. Still others
point to the inability of the insane to assist their lawyers in
last-minute litigation. In the Middle Ages, it was thought that madness
was its own punishment.
Mr. Hampton, who filed the latest appeals brief, said that from the trial
on he was revolted by the Panetti case.
"I thought there was no way, no way, no matter how bad things in the state
of Texas got, that it would allow someone in the full flower of
schizophrenia to represent himself," he said.
But in repeatedly calling himself insane - "I went nuts," Mr. Panetti told
the police officers after the killings, "well, I am nuts" - Mr. Panetti
seemed to have run into his own Catch-22, leaving jurors skeptical of
anyone so eager to establish his insanity.
Now the courts, taking one last look at Mr. Panetti, must decide whether
he is sane enough to die.
(source: New York Times)
Scott Panetti, a death row inmate in Texas, understands that the state
says it intends to execute him for the murder of his wife's parents.
Scott Panetti being interviewed in 1999 in prison in Texas.
But Mr. Panetti, 48, who represented himself in court despite a long and
colorful history of mental illness, says he believes that the state's real
reason is a different one. He says the state, in league with Satan, wants
to kill him to keep him from preaching the Gospel.
That delusion has been documented by doctors and acknowledged by judges
and prosecutors. It poses what experts call the next big question in death
penalty law now that the Supreme Court has barred the execution of
juvenile offenders and the mentally retarded: what makes someone too
mentally ill to be executed?
A 3-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth
Circuit, in New Orleans, recently said Mr. Panetti was sane enough to die.
The full court will soon decide whether to hear the case.
Mr. Panetti, in prison now almost 14 years for the killings in 1992 in the
quaint Hill Country city of Fredericksburg, has long seemed to exemplify
madness, addressing himself to the jury in his trial in 1995 as "the
born-again April Fool," a schizophrenic healed by God.
In and out of mental institutions 14 times and addicted to drugs and
alcohol since he almost drowned as a child and was nearly electrocuted by
a power line, Mr. Panetti wore cowboy costumes to court, delivered
rambling monologues, put himself on the witness stand and sought to
subpoena the pope, Jesus and John F. Kennedy.
Jurors were clearly alienated and took little more than an hour to reject
his insanity defense.
They found that Mr. Panetti knew right from wrong and so deserved the
death penalty. That is a separate question from whether his mental illness
should bar his execution.
Two decades ago, the United States Supreme Court in Ford v. Wainwright
ruled that the Eighth Amendment prohibited the execution of the insane.
Since then, lower courts have struggled to find a way to apply that
principle in practice.
The state and federal courts that have heard Mr. Panetti's case have said
that a bare awareness of the fact of impending execution and the stated
reason for it is enough.
"In Texas," said Greg Wiercioch, a lawyer with the Texas Defender Service
who has consulted with Mr. Panetti's defense, "if you cast a shadow on a
sunny day, you're competent to be executed."
Other courts require more. Relying on a concurring opinion in the Supreme
Court decision, they say the inmate actually has to perceive the
connection between the crime and the punishment.
The 3-judge panel in Mr. Panetti's case acknowledged that he was mentally
ill with what has been diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder and that he
thus might lack a rational understanding of his fate. But the panel
nonetheless ruled that he was competent to be executed because he was able
to understand the stated basis for his execution.
His new lawyers dispute that.
"He completely scoffs at the notion that it's the State of Texas trying to
execute him," said Keith Hampton, a lawyer from Austin who filed the
latest appeal with a co-counsel, Michael C. Gross of San Antonio. "He
thinks it's the demons and evil ones."
Legal and medical experts estimate that hundreds of people with
schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses are on death rows around
the nation.
Courts have spared the lives of 7 inmates based on the 1986 decision, the
Texas Defender Service said.
David R. Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston who has met
more than 75 death row inmates, visited Mr. Panetti at his lawyers'
request. "Of all the people I have met on death row, he's the
gold-medal-crazy winner," Professor Dow said.
On Sept. 8, 1992, Mr. Panetti broke into the home of his in-laws, Joe and
Amanda Alvarado, and shot them to death in front of his estranged 2nd
wife, Sonja, and his 3-year-old daughter, Amanda, known as Birdie.
Taking on his defense, and calling himself as a witness, he argued that he
had been taken over by an alter ego he called Sarge Ironhorse.
"Sarge boom boom," Mr. Panetti testified. "Sarge is gone. No more Sarge.
Sonja and Birdie. Joe, Amanda lying kitchen, here, there blood. No, leave.
Scott, remember exactly what Sarge did. Shot the lock. Walked in the
kitchen. Sonja, where's Birdie? Sonja here."
Prosecutors, their medical experts and the courts agreed that Mr. Panetti
suffers from mental illness. Judge Sam Sparks of Federal District Court in
Austin found in 2004 that Mr. Panetti's illness was characterized by
"grandiosity and a delusional belief system in which he believes himself
to be persecuted for his religious activities and beliefs."
Judge Sparks said that was not enough to spare Mr. Panetti.
Others agree.
Robert Blecker, a law professor at the New York Law School and a cautious
supporter of the death penalty, said Mr. Panetti's execution could serve
the goal of retribution.
"He knows what he did," Professor Blecker said. "He knows what the state
is about to do to him, and why. For the retributivist, the past counts. It
counts for us, and for us to be retributively satisfied, it must also
count for him."
Prosecutors made the same point in a brief to the Fifth Circuit last year.
"All that is required to avoid the Eighth Amendment prohibition against
cruel and unusual punishment is that the petitioner factually understand
the reason for this punishment," the prosecutors wrote.
Executions of inmates who exhibited signs of madness are not unusual. In
1992, Arkansas executed Ricky Ray Rector not long after he put aside the
dessert of his last meal to eat later.
In March, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in
Richmond, Va., split, 7 to 6, over whether Percy L. Walton could be
executed, notwithstanding his delusional belief that after his death he
would "come back as a better person" and "get a Burger King." A majority
said this was proof that Mr. Walton understood he would be executed.
"That a person believes that he will have an 'afterlife,' however strange
his views of that 'afterlife' may be," Judge Dennis W. Shedd wrote,
"necessarily suggests he believes his existing life will end."
The laws of most states, based on English common law, have long banned the
execution of the insane.
"The reasons for the rule are less sure and less uniform than the rule
itself," Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote in the 1986 case.
Some judges say the "miserable spectacle" of such executions simply
offends humanity. Others say retribution is not served by executing
someone who cannot understand why he is being put to death. Still others
point to the inability of the insane to assist their lawyers in
last-minute litigation. In the Middle Ages, it was thought that madness
was its own punishment.
Mr. Hampton, who filed the latest appeals brief, said that from the trial
on he was revolted by the Panetti case.
"I thought there was no way, no way, no matter how bad things in the state
of Texas got, that it would allow someone in the full flower of
schizophrenia to represent himself," he said.
But in repeatedly calling himself insane - "I went nuts," Mr. Panetti told
the police officers after the killings, "well, I am nuts" - Mr. Panetti
seemed to have run into his own Catch-22, leaving jurors skeptical of
anyone so eager to establish his insanity.
Now the courts, taking one last look at Mr. Panetti, must decide whether
he is sane enough to die.
(source: New York Times)