Last week, the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals (the State’s Supreme Court for Criminal Cases) ruled that the state
cannot forcibly medicate a death-row inmate to make him competent, so it can
then execute him. Full Story
It has long been the law that the state
cannot execute a person who is mentally incompetent to understand why he is
being executed. This defeats one of the
principles of execution.
Steven Staley is a mentally ill death
row inmate who fatally shot a Fort Worth restaurant manager in the course of a
robbery that came at the end of a four-state crime spree with two
accomplices. He was sentenced to death
in 1991. Staley has been diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia. The Texas Tribune reported that:
"He believes there is a big conspiracy orchestrated by the state and that everybody, everybody, is part of the conspiracy," his attorney, John Stickels, said in May 2012. "He believes that he was wrongfully convicted because of the conspiracy."
In February 2006, Staley's execution was stayed after the court found him mentally incompetent. In 2006, he told psychologist Mark Cunningham that the jury found him guilty because the judge was trying to steal his one-of-a-kind faded red 1958 Pontiac pickup, which he said had a $1.5 million street value, and because Oprah Winfrey paid off the jury.
After that stay, Tarrant County state district Judge Wayne Salvant ordered Staley to be forcibly medicated.”
Both the American Psychiatric
Association and American Medical Association both consider it unethical for
doctors forcibly medicate individuals for the sole purpose of executing
them. The Court of Criminal Appeals
ruled that the trial judge did not have the authority to order Staley to be
medicated. Without the medication, he is
not competent for execution.
The court got this one right. It is just wrong to forcibly medicate a
prisoner solely in order to execute him.
It will be another issue, however, if Staley is given medication to
treat his schizophrenia, from which he clearly suffers, and then he is then
competent as a side effect of that treatment.
If he refuses treatment to avoid execution, only, the man will be living
inside the hell of his imagination. He and his attorneys are in a bind on
that.
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