On Death Row, Fate of Mentally Ill Is Thorny Problem

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

On Death Row, Fate of Mentally Ill Is Thorny Problem

Can States Execute Inmates Made Sane Only by Drugs?
Medical, Legal Quandary A Test Case in Mr. Thompson
By GARY FIELDS
December 14, 2006; Page A1

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- At 8:30 a.m., Gregory Thompson, his hands cuffed to his waist, has already swallowed eight of the 12 pills he takes a day. Mr. Thompson is on death row at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, and like many prison inmates, he is mentally ill. In addition to his daily drug regimen, he receives an antipsychotic injection twice a month. The medication controls his paranoia, delusions, schizophrenia and depression. It may also make him competent enough to be executed in the oversized wooden chair housed in a building less than 100 yards away.

Why the 45-year-old is here isn't in dispute. On New Year's Day 1985, he abducted Brenda Blanton Lane from a shopping-center parking lot in Shelbyville, Tenn., while stealing her car. He fatally stabbed the 28-year-old four times in the back. The last strike had such force that the butcher's knife he used came within millimeters of passing through her body. He left her to die at the end of an icy dirt road. Today, however, Mr. Thompson's case is at the center of a complex debate about the death penalty in the U.S. Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that mentally retarded defendants and juveniles cannot be sentenced to death. Mr. Thompson is asking the courts to decide whether mentally ill prisoners can be executed if rendered competent only by medication. His twice-delayed execution and similar cases are working through the judicial system; one will likely end up in front of the high court.

There are more than 3,300 people awaiting execution in the U.S., according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group critical of how the death penalty is administered. Various organizations conservatively estimate that at least 10% of them suffer from serious mental illness. In all, about 17% of the nation's prisoners have a diagnosis of serious mental illness. The Supreme Court ruled 20 years ago that federal and state authorities could not execute defendants too insane to understand that they were about to be killed. But states have wide latitude to determine how sane a defendant must be in order to be executed. They can also choose to medicate defendants to reach that point, a practice that's been outlawed in at least three states with the death penalty. Some medical and legal groups argue that it puts doctors in an ethical bind: having to treat people in order for them to be killed.

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One of the most closely watched fights involves Steven Kenneth Staley, who murdered a restaurant manager during a 1989 robbery. The Texas Court of Appeals declined to hear his appeal recently, meaning Mr. Staley can be forcibly medicated. No decision has been made about how his case will proceed. Prosecutors argue that defendants could scam the system by feigning mental illness while others might avoid execution by refusing their medication.

Mr. Thompson, the Tennessee death-row inmate, takes Haldol, Cogentine, lithium and Prolexin. In the late 1990s, he was forcibly medicated. In 2001, the state requested the appointment of an official overseer to make sure Mr. Thompson took his medication. The state says Mr. Thompson is now doing so voluntarily. His court-appointed attorney, Dana Hansen Chavis, says that's only because Mr. Thompson "reasonably fears for his safety if he discontinues taking them."

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URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116606635624649766.html (subscription)

[question everything]

1. No comments? (nt)

[BlooInBloo]

2. Not for the black ones it isn't.

[Target_For_Exterm]

3. The irony about this is that at the same time they hold

the mentally ill responsible for whatever crimes they might commit, they also deny them medical care so they can't get the drugs that make them sane.

Just about every medical insurance policy has different coverage for mental illness than it does other medical problems.

We're just lucky that only a very small fraction of the mentally ill are violent or criminal. Otherwise, look out...!

Instead, they end up homeless on the streets, living out their paranoid delusions and having fun with psychotic episodes because mental health treatment is not available to vast numbers of Americans.

It's like blaming someone for dying of cancer when you refuse to treat them.

[kineneb]

4. an interesting problem

and one with which I can sympathize. I take antidepressants and see a therapist so I can function. My thoughts on this are- if the crime was committed while the person was not medicated, then they really are not responsible for their actions. Then they come under the "danger to self or others" laws. If they were on meds and still committed a crime, then they deserve more severe punishment. We should change the laws to have a "guilty but insane" verdict, to keep the criminally insane off the streets. I don't believe in the death "penalty"; death is not a punishment, especially for those who have been suicidal.

[kiahzero]

5. "Not guilty by reason of insanity" often leads to institutionalization

In some cases, it can be a much longer "sentence," because of the social pressures on mental health providers to keep someone locked up.

[question everything]

6. OK, locked up. But to execute them?

This is the problem that I had with Clinton in 1992, and why I voted for Tsongas in the primaries. That he (Clinton) cut his New Hampshire campaign to go back home to sign the execution of a mentally challenged man... who did not want to finish his pizza (I think) but to keep some of it for "later."

[kiahzero]

7. I'm against the death penalty in all cases.

I was just pointing out that a "guilty but insane" verdict doesn't really seem to be necessary to me.

As for the OP, it seems to me that the reason that the State cannot execute the mentally ill has more to do with their mental condition at the time of the crime, rather than their mental condition at the time of the execution, for the same reasons that the prohibition of the State executing minors is about the age of the criminal when the crime was committed, not when the execution occurs.