Mental Illness and Execution: Supremes to weigh in

The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Jan. 5 that it would hear the appeal of Texas death row inmate Scott Panetti to address the question of how mentally ill a person has to be for an execution to be considered cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the Eighth Amendment. Panetti was sentenced to death for the 1992 murder of his in-laws. He has schizophrenia and, prior to the murders, had been hospitalized at least 11 times (in 1986, for example, he buried his furniture in his back yard and slashed at the walls of his house with a knife in an attempt to exorcise demons) and was released from his last hospitalization just two weeks before the murders. At his trial, Panetti represented himself, dressed in a purple cowboy outfit, and tried to subpoena Jesus, John F. Kennedy, and Anne Bancroft as witnesses.

Panetti was convicted and sentenced to death, but his lawyers (led by Austin federal appellate guru Keith Hampton) have argued in his appeals that he's too insane to be killed and that to do so would amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Indeed, while Panetti is aware that he is to be killed for what he did, he believes that his execution is part of a grander conspiracy by the state to stop him from preaching the gospel. The state, meanwhile, has argued that Panetti has the capability to understand why he is being executed; therefore, the state argues, his sentence should be carried out.

Whether mere capacity to understand the sentence clears the way for an execution will be decided when the Supremes hear the case this spring. (For more on the case, see "Panetti Sane Enough to Die," Oct. 8, 2004.)