Scott Panetti Case Roundup: 5th Circuit Court of Appeals justly stops execution
Stefanie Faucher
This email contains editorial and opinion coverage from:
Fort Worth Star Telegram - Editorial: 5th Circuit Court of Appeals justly stops execution
The Daily Free Press (Editorial) - Editorial: Crime and Capital Punishment
Al Jazeera America - Laura Carasik: Federal appeals court spares mentally ill man from execution – for now
New York Times - Federal Appeals Court Halts Execution in Texas Murder Case
Associated Press - Federal court stops Texas inmate's scheduled execution; attorneys say he's too mentally ill
Washington Post - Appeals court issues stay for Scott Panetti, mentally ill Texas inmate facing execution
NPR national - Texas Puts Execution Of Mentally Ill Man On Hold
NBC News - Court Relieves Rick Perry From Death Penalty Dilemma
BBC News - US court orders execution stay for mentally ill man
CBC “As It Happens” - Stay of execution for Texas death row killer who defended himself in a cowboy costume
Huffington Post - Ted Cruz On Scott Panetti Death Sentence: 'I Trust The Criminal Justice System'
Slate - Behind the Christian Conservative Push To Save Scott Panetti
Buzzfeed - Scott Panetti Will Not Be Executed In Texas Tonight
Reason - Social Pressure Works: Court Orders Stay of Execution for Scott Panetti
Vice - A Court Just Stopped Texas from Executing a Paranoid Schizophrenic
Agence France Presse - Execution stayed for mentally ill prisoner
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Federal court stays execution of Wisconsin native Scott Panetti
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Panetti's attorney speaks on Texas court's decision
Sawyer County Record - Court orders stay of execution for man with local ties
San Antonio Express-News - Condemned inmate gets stay of execution
Austin Chronicle - Quote of the Week
Texas Monthly - A Sane Decision
KXAN (TX) - Texas execution case is only latest with mental illness concerns
KPRC Houston - Federal appeals court halts execution for Texas prisoner Scott Panetti
Christian Post- Mentally Ill Texas Man, Scott Panetti, Granted Last-Minute Stay of Execution; Christian Leaders Urge Gov. Perry to Show Mercy
Christian Newswire - Open Appeal to Gov. Perry to Commute Death Sentence
Christian Science Monitor- Federal court halts controversial execution of Scott Panetti in Texas (+video)
Catholic News Agency - Court commended for staying execution of mentally ill man
Courthouse News Service - Fifth Circuit Stays Execution of Schizophrenic Inmate
Agencia EFE - U.S. court suspends execution of schizophrenic inmate
Indo-Asian News Service (IANS)- US Approves Lawyers’ Appeal, Suspends Execution of Schizophrenic Inmate
Conservative HQ - 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Issues Stay Of Scott Panetti Execution
Latin Post - Capital Punishment News Update 2014: What's Next for Mentally Ill Texas Man?
The Gospel Herald - Scott Panetti Case: Evangelical Leader Writes Open Appeal to Gov. Rick Perry to Commute Death Sentence
The Star-Phoenix -Texas puts execution of the mentally ill on trial
Sky News - Schizophrenic spared the death penalty
WQOW (ABC, WI) - Hayward man's execution stayed hours before planned injection
Front Page Mag - Ted Cruz Gets It Right Again on Scott Panetti Case
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http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/12/03/6337856/5th-circuit-court-of-appeals-justly.html
5th Circuit Court of Appeals justly stops execution
In the interest of justice, and amid a inhabitant cheer from anomalous legal, domestic and eremite voices, a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halted a execution of a mentally ill male Wednesday, hours before Texas was scheduled to put him to death.
Scott Panetti, convicted of murdering his disloyal wife’s relatives in 1992, has a 30-year story of serious mental illness, a condition his lawyers argued has gotten worse in new years and should free him from execution.
In a two-sentence statement, a three-judge row of a appeals justice said, “We STAY a execution tentative serve sequence of a justice to concede us to entirely cruise a late nearing and formidable authorised questions during emanate in this matter. An sequence environment a lecture report and verbal evidence will follow.”
The box was stayed creatively in 2004, though Texas continued to competition Panetti’s lawyers’ claims of his mental incompetence, and a 5th Circuit resolved final year that he was indeed efficient to accept a state’s ultimate punishment.
When a state district decider in Oct set a execution date for Dec. 3 — that a cursed man’s attorneys contend they schooled dual weeks after from a journal comment — there was a violent rush of justice filings, from a district turn all a approach to a U.S. Supreme Court. The lawyers also appealed to a Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and to Gov. Rick Perry.
Several organizations and individuals, including some-more than 50 devout leaders, a Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops and a American Bar Association, against a execution and upheld a petition for clemency.
In a Nov. 6 letter, a bar organisation asked Perry to check Panetti’s execution “not as a integrity of his shame or ignorance or as a thoughtfulness of your position on a genocide penalty, though simply to concede for a concrete and finish care of his mental health station and to emanate a legal record of either he has a mental commotion that impairs his ability to have a receptive bargain of a reasons for his punishment.”
The Supreme Court, in a 2007 statute in Panetti’s case, pronounced rapist defendants can't be put to genocide if they do not know a reason for their execution.
Since Panetti has not had a mental analysis in 7 years, his attorneys asked that his execution date be put off to concede them a event to have him examined by experts and to challenge his competency.
Last week, a state’s top rapist justice voted 6-3 to repudiate a stay of execution for Panetti. Still, Republican Judge Tom Price of a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals released a sardonic gainsay observant he no longer agrees with a genocide chastisement and quite hostile it in Panetti’s case.
“It is improbable to me how a execution of a exceedingly mentally ill chairman such as [Panetti] would measurably allege a atonement and anticipation functions purportedly served by a genocide penalty,” Price wrote.
He continued, “I can suppose no receptive reason for figure a line between a breach on a execution of a mentally dense chairman or an violent chairman while needing a execution of exceedingly mentally ill person. At minimum, therefore, we would reason that a execution of a exceedingly mentally ill chairman violates a Eighth Amendment of a sovereign Constitution.”
The 5th Circuit statute shows that a appeals row judges have a welfare for caution. There is, after all, no room for blunder and no mistreat in entirely examining a attorneys’ arguments.
The Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops was discerning to applaud, observant in a statement, “The Texas Bishops have prolonged taught about a filth of a genocide chastisement and were quite outspoken seeking forgiveness for Panetti, who has been diagnosed by several doctors as pang from serious mental illness.”
Texas, with a “tough-on-crime” repute and a station as a inhabitant personality in executions, is not expected to give adult perplexing to lift out a genocide judgment for Panetti.
For now, a right thing has been done. Attorneys have another event to disagree on his behalf, maybe to have experts weigh his mental condition.
Along a way, a 5th Circuit or a Supreme Court should serve conclude mental cunning and a parameters underneath that a state can govern a mentally marred chairman and still belong to a Eighth Amendment’s anathema on vicious and surprising punishment.
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http://dailyfreepress.com/2014/12/04/edit-crime-and-capital-punishment/
EDITORIAL: Crime and Capital Punishment
Written by Editors· December 4, 2014 7:19 am
On Sept. 8, 1992, Texas resident Scott Panetti woke up around dawn, shaved his head and drove to his wife’s parents’ house. In front of his wife and 3-year-old daughter, he shot and killed his in-laws. During a confrontation with police, he released his wife and daughter unharmed, then changed into a suit, went to the nearest police station and turned himself in.
Panetti has suffered from paranoid schizophrenia for more than three decades, his lawyers told the U.S. Supreme Court. He was scheduled for execution by lethal injection on Wednesday.
Panetti’s lawyers successfully fought off the death penalty charge, which was stayed by a federal appeals court in New Orleans on Wednesday. While a stay does not necessarily mean that Panetti will not wind up being executed, it does give federal courts, including the Supreme Court, more time to consider the larger issues surrounding the case – such as the execution of a severely mentally ill man.
The case has gotten national attention from opponents of the death penalty and others, who say that Panetti clearly was not aware of what he was doing when he killed his in-laws. Protestors of the original court decision say that it violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment.
In 2007, Panetti’s lawyers argued in front of the Supreme Court that he failed to meet the standard of competence set by the precedent-setting case Ford v. Wainwright in 1986, which established that “the Eighth Amendment forbids the execution only of those who are unaware of the punishment they are about to suffer and why they are to suffer it.”
However, under Texas law, a person is considered competent to stand trial if they present “sufficient ability to consult with his or her lawyer with a reasonable degree or rational understanding” and “a rational, as well as a factual, understanding of the proceedings against him or her.” Panetti’s lawyers argued that Panetti did not have a rational understanding. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz from Texas said a factual understanding was enough.
Michael Perlin, a lawyer and professor of law at New York Law School, spoke out about the Panetti decision before the stay was granted Wednesday.
“The Panetti case is as shameful a stain on our legal system as I have observed in my 43-plus years as a lawyer,” he told Vice. “There is no question as to the profundity of his mental illness and similarly no question that his execution mocks the notion that due process is truly available to all in the criminal justice system.”
Texas is not new to capital punishment — the state has executed 518 inmates since 1976, by far the most of any state. The next-highest number belongs to Oklahoma, which has performed 111 executions. There are currently 18 states that have abolished capital punishment, including Massachusetts. Capital punishment is controversial in general, but it is especially so in cases such as Panetti’s, where the convicted is clearly severely mentally ill. It is estimated that at any given time, 10 to 15 percent of convicts on death row are mentally ill.
In cases of mentally ill death row inmates, it is argued that they didn’t know what they were doing at the time of the crime. And in instances of severe psychosis like Panetti, it’s fairly clear that there is an extreme lack of competence. He understands what he did in murdering his ex-wife’s parents, but it was his intentions that are not understandable to the mentally competent.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott claims that Panetti has been secretly filmed while talking to his parents about his crime and shows “a rational understanding of the relationship between his crime and his punishment.” But there is a difference between lucidity and logic — he may be able to talk to others about the crime, but likely does not understand the immensity of what he’s saying.
The relationship between incarceration and mental illness is a tale as old as time. If people were found to be mentally ill, they were placed in jail instead of in treatment. Of course, however, this was at a time before doctors knew what to do in cases of mental illness. So then why, when we have modern medicine and the ability to at least partially rehabilitate people with even the most severe of psychoses, is giving a mentally incompetent person the death penalty an option.
Regardless of one’s views on the death penalty, treating this man as if he is a rational thinker is the cruel and unusual punishment the Eighth Amendment warns against. Panetti needs to be put somewhere where there are people who know how to deal with him. He should be treated, not senselessly put to death.
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Federal appeals court spares mentally ill man from execution – for now
Case raises critical moral and legal questions about the death penalty
by Lauren Carasik, December 4, 2014
On Wednesday, hours before his scheduled execution, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay for Scott Panetti, 56, amid a national outcry about the legality and morality of killing an inmate with a 35-year history of severe mental illness. Panetti’s guilt is not in doubt. In 1992, he shaved his head, donned military fatigues, grabbed a hunting rifle and shot his wife’s parents in their home as she and their daughter watched in horror.
Panetti’s long history of mental illness is well documented: He was diagnosed with schizophrenia more than a decade before the murders, and he was hospitalized, often involuntarily, more than a dozen times. Panetti’s lawyers maintain he did not have a “rational understanding” of the reasons for his impending execution, as required by a 2007 Supreme Court decision (PDF) on his case. Panetti claimed that the state of Texas wants to execute him for preaching the Gospel to other inmates, not in retribution for the murders he committed. But the state insists Panetti is malingering and clearly understands that the state intended to kill him and why. The planned execution has engendered a divisive debate about the United States’ evolving aversion to the death penalty, especially for those whose are severely impaired by mental illness.
Panetti was sentenced to death in 1995 after a circuslike trial that hardly represented a fair adjudication of his competence and culpability. Beset by paranoia, he dismissed his court-appointed counsel and represented himself. He proceeded to dress in purple cowboy attire and subpoenaed more than 200 witnesses, including Jesus Christ, the Pope and John F. Kennedy. At times, he testified as his alter ego “Sarge” to whom he attributed the murders, recounting the day in disjointed third-person ramblings. His standby counsel at the time characterized the trial as a “judicial farce and a mockery of self-representation.” It is incomprehensible how a judge intimately familiar with Panetti’s mental health history and bizarre conduct would allow him to represent himself in a proceeding to determine his fate.
Since then, Panetti and his attorneys waged a lengthy and circuitous legal battle to reverse the ruling. In August 2013 the conservative 5th Circuit appeared to reason that because he was sane enough to argue that he was mentally unfit for execution, he was not ill enough to be spared lethal injection.
Evolving legal standards
At this point the Supreme Court’s view of such cases is quite clear. In 1986 it ruled in Ford v. Wainwright that executing a mentally ill person violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, reflecting the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” The court held that such executions would not deter crime and that sparing those incapable of fully understanding the nature of their crime and punishment also served “to protect the dignity of society itself from the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance.” Yet the court declined to define the standard for mental illness, delegating that assessment to trial courts. Building on its evolving jurisprudence on the death penalty for those with limited cognitive capacities, the court in 2002 banned capital punishment for the “mentally retarded” in Atkins v. Virginia. Three years later, in Roper v. Simmons, the court prohibited the execution of juveniles convicted of crimes committed before they turned 18.
Texas’ aggressive pursuit of the death penalty demonstrates why the Supreme Court must outline clear standards dictating when mentally ill inmates such as Panetti are too impaired to be executed.
Last month the Criminal Court of Appeals in Texas denied Panetti’s appeal. But it was hardly an endorsement of the state’s unyielding pursuit of Panetti’s execution. “This court, at best, deprives appellant of a fair opportunity to litigate his claims, thereby violating the constitutionally required procedural protections recognized in Ford,” Judge Elsa Alcala argued in a dissenting opinion. “At worst, this court’s decision will result in the irreversible and constitutionally impermissible execution of a mentally incompetent person.”
Her fellow appellate judge Tom Price penned a similarly withering dissent. “The death penalty as a form of punishment should be abolished because the execution of individuals does not appear to measurably advance the retribution and deterrence purposes served by the death penalty,” he opined. “The life without parole option adequately protects society at large in the same way as the death penalty punishment option, and the risk of executing an innocent person for a capital murder is unreasonably high.” He also wrote that the strict procedural impediments to challenging the death penalty and the ubiquity of ineffective legal representation at the trial and appellate stages made its imposition unconscionable.
Earlier this week, Panetti’s lawyers asked Texas Gov. Rick Perry for a 30-day stay of execution after the state Board of Pardons and Parole refused Panetti’s clemency request. But Perry was an unlikely ally. Texas has executed more inmates than any other U.S. state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 — 518 people to date. In 2001 he vetoed a state law barring the execution of those with mental retardation. And in 2004 he rejected the board’s rare recommendation of clemency for Kelsey Patterson, who was also diagnosed with schizophrenia. Panetti’s lawyers have also asked the Supreme Court for a stay of execution, arguing that executing a person with serious mental illness violates the Constitution.
Shifting public attitudes
Despite the gruesome and deeply personal nature of the crimes, Panetti’s former wife has said she did not support his execution. Human rights advocates and a coalition of evangelical and conservative leaders, including libertarian Ron Paul, have argued that Panetti should be spared lethal injection. Paul has been increasingly vocal in his belief that government is incapable of imposing the death penalty in a fair and consistent manner. Some anti-abortion activists perceive state killing as inconsistent with their pro-life position, and a growing number of conservatives understand the costs of death penalty appeals exceeds the price tag for imprisoning someone for life. These sentiments reflect an emerging national consensus: In a survey conducted by Public Policy Polling last month, 58 percent of those polled opposed capital punishment for the mentally ill, with 28 percent in favor and 14 percent on the fence. And on Dec. 2, two United Nations experts implored the U.S. government to halt Panetti’s execution.
Panetti is not the only mentally ill inmate Texas is planning to execute. Andre Thomas, who killed his ex-wife, her daughter and his son, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. In separate incidents, he plucked out both his eyes, ingesting the second one. Yet he continues to languish on death row. The advocacy group Mental Health America has estimated that 5 to 10 percent of death row inmates suffer from a severe mental illness. Those opposing the execution of Panetti, Thomas and other mentally ill death row inmates are not suggesting they be released from prison. But commuting their death sentences to life without parole would preserve community safety and reflect the understanding that killing those with severe mental impairments serves no legitimate penological goals.
As the Supreme Court eloquently argued in Ford v. Wainwright nearly two decades ago, capital punishment for mentally ill individuals “simply offends humanity.” To be sure, there is no ready test to measure the severity of mental illness, not least because the symptoms are neither constant nor easy to gauge objectively. But Texas’ aggressive pursuit of the death penalty amply demonstrates why the nation’s highest court must outline clear standards dictating when mentally ill inmates, including Panetti, are too impaired to be executed.
Lauren Carasik is a clinical professor of law and the director of the international human rights clinic at the Western New England University School of Law.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.
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Federal Appeals Court Halts Execution in Texas Murder Case
By David Montomery, December 3, 2014
An appeals court panel in New Orleans on Wednesday stayed the execution of a Texas man, in a case that has gained national attention as a test for issues surrounding the execution of the mentally ill.
The decision, by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, postponed the execution, saying that the court needed time to consider the larger issues surrounding the case. The court said a hearing would be scheduled to consider the case.
The man, Scott Panetti, 56, was scheduled to be executed Wednesday in the 1992 slaying of his wife’s parents with a deer rifle as his horrified wife and daughter looked on. Mr. Panetti represented himself at his subsequent trial, wearing a cowboy costume with a purple bandanna while trying to call more than 200 witnesses, including the pope, John F. Kennedy and Jesus.
“It appears to us that cooler legal minds have prevailed and are preventing Texas from completing its rush to execute a severely mentally ill man,” said Kathryn Kase, Mr. Panetti’s lead lawyer and executive director of the Texas Defender Service, which represents people facing the death penalty.
The appeals court judges are expected to define specific areas they want to address when they issue a briefing order that will include a date for oral arguments. The panel was composed of Chief Judge Carl E. Stewart, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton; Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham, nominated by President Ronald Reagan; and Judge Priscilla Owen, nominated by President George W. Bush.
Mr. Panetti’s lawyers contend that he has suffered from schizophrenia for more than three decades and on Monday, they urged federal courts, including the Supreme Court, to intervene on the grounds that putting a mentally ill person to death was unconstitutional and violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The length of the stay was not specified in the order, but Ms. Kase said the appeals court clearly “wants to take time to consider the facts and the law and the issue.”
Gov. Rick Perry, asked about the appeals court’s decision at a late-morning news conference, said that he respected the court’s decision.
The state attorney general, Greg Abbott, declined to comment when he was asked about the ruling at a news conference. Mr. Abbott will be sworn in as governor in January.
The case has drawn an outcry not only from death penalty opponents, but from others who say the execution of a mentally ill person who may not have been aware of his or her own actions crosses a legal threshold that is clearly in violation of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment.
The state has contended in legal filings that conversations between Mr. Panetti and his parents, secretly taped by prison officials, “provide conclusive evidence that Panetti has a rational understanding of the relationship between his crime and his punishment,” and that he “has been grossly exaggerating his symptoms while being observed.”
“Panetti knows that he killed his in-laws, while his wife and child looked on, and he knows that he has been sentenced to die for that crime,” Mr. Abbott’s office said.
According to his lawyers, Mr. Panetti first received a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder in 1978 — 14 years before killing his in-laws. He was hospitalized 13 times from 1978 to 1991, and in 1986 expressed “fears that the devil is after him,” according to a timeline provided by his lawyers.
Mr. Panetti’s condition deteriorated in the early 1990s, according to legal documents, when he failed to take prescribed antipsychotic medication and discontinued treatment at a Kerrville hospital. At one point, he brandished a cavalry sword, called himself “Sgt. Iron Horse” and asserted that residents of Fredericksburg, where he lived, were plotting against him.
Seeking his wife and 3-year-old daughter on the day of the killings, Mr. Panetti armed himself with a sawed-off shotgun and a deer rifle and went to the home of his in-laws, Joe and Amanda Alvarado. After he killed the couple, he took his wife and daughter to a bunkhouse where he had been living. He released them unharmed in a standoff with the police, according to court documents, then changed into a suit and surrendered.
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Federal court stops Texas inmate's scheduled execution; attorneys say he's too mentally ill
Court grants Texas prisoner execution reprieve
By MICHAEL GRACZYK, December 3, 2014
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A federal appeals court halted Wednesday's scheduled execution of a Texas killer whose attempt to subpoena Jesus Christ as a trial witness and other behavior led his attorneys to argue he is too mentally ill for capital punishment.
Scott Panetti, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia some 14 years before fatally shooting his estranged wife's parents in 1992, was granted the reprieve less than eight hours before he was set to receive a lethal injection. In stopping the execution, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged the legal complexity of putting a mentally ill inmate to death.
In a two-sentence ruling, the court said it needs time to "fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter" and that it will schedule briefings and hearings to consider arguments.
The Texas attorney general's office said it has no immediate plans to appeal and that state attorneys will present arguments to the 5th Circuit once the court sets a date for them.
Panetti's lawyers described him as delusional and argued that he was too mentally ill to qualify for capital punishment and they sought the delay so Panetti could undergo new competency examinations.
Panetti, who acted as his own trial lawyer, testified as an alternate personality he called "Sarge" to describe the slayings of Joe and Amanda Alvarado. He wore a purple cowboy outfit, including a big cowboy hat, during trial and largely ignored a standby attorney the judge appointed to assist him.
Appeals also were before the U.S. Supreme Court, which has said mentally ill people cannot be executed if they don't have a factual and rational understanding of why they're being punished. The high court took no action once the lower court stopped the punishment.
Panetti, 56, was still at a prison outside Livingston when the ruling came. He had not been moved to Huntsville, where executions are carried out, Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark said.
The Hayward, Wisconsin, native, who was convicted and sentenced in 1995, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1978. He had been hospitalized more than a dozen times for treatment in the decade before the shootings.
Panetti's appeals lawyers said they are grateful for the reprieve that will allow "a careful review of the issues surrounding his competency."
"Mr. Panetti has not had a competency evaluation in seven years, and we believe that today's ruling is the first step in a process which will clearly demonstrate that Mr. Panetti is too severely mentally ill to be executed," Greg Wiercioch and Kathryn Kase said in a statement.
Both visited with Panetti in prison in the past few weeks and said his mental condition had worsened.
Wiercioch said Panetti told him devices implanted in his teeth by prison system dentists were sending messages to his brain.
Panetti also has insisted Satan is working through prison officials to execute him to keep him from preaching the Gospel.
State attorneys said records showed no significant change since Panetti's last competency examination. During his trial and subsequent appeals, no court has found him incompetent or insane.
Panetti's estranged wife and her 3-year-old daughter had moved in with the Alvarados at their home in Fredericksburg, about 60 miles north of San Antonio. She obtained a court order to keep Panetti away.
Enraged, he dressed in camouflage clothing and armed himself with a rifle, a sawed-off shotgun and knives. He broke into the home and shot the couple.
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Appeals court issues stay for Scott Panetti, mentally ill Texas inmate facing execution
By Sarah Larimer, December 3, 2014
A federal appeals court stayed the scheduled execution of a Texas inmate Wednesday, just hours before he was expected to be put to death for killing his estranged wife’s parents.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans granted the stay for Scott Panetti, whose attorneys have argued that he is too mentally ill to be executed.
“We stay the execution pending further order of the court to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter,” Wednesday’s ruling read. “An order setting a briefing schedule and oral argument will follow.”
Panetti wore camouflage when he drove to the home of Joe and Amanda Alvarado in 1992, breaking the lock on the front door, and entering the house. He killed his wife’s parents in front of both her and their daughter. He then held his wife and daughter hostage, before eventually surrendering to police.
According to the Associated Press:
At his trial, he acted as his own attorney, dressed in a purple cowboy outfit, attempted to subpoena more than 200 witnesses, including the pope and Jesus Christ, and took on an alternate personality, “Sarge,” to testify.
Earlier this week, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to delay the execution or commute Panetti’s sentence to life. The vote was unanimous, the AP reported.
The case has drawn the attention of opponents of the death penalty, advocates for mental health reform, and a number of conservative leaders, who in November wrote Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and asked that Panetti’s sentence be commuted.
Panetti’s attorneys, Greg Wiercioch and Kathryn Kase, said in a statement that they were “grateful” for the court’s decision.
“We believe that people who live with severe mental illness should have treatment options to keep themselves and others safe,” the statement read. “When people who have severe mental illness enter our criminal justice system, the system has a moral obligation to respond appropriately to the limitations and deficits presented by mental illness.”
According to Texas Defender Services, the nonprofit for which Kase serves as executive director, Panetti has for decades struggled with mental illness, starting with a 1978 diagnosis of “early schizophrenia.”
Attorneys for the state have argued that Panetti, who was never found incompetent or insane during legal proceedings, was fit to stand trial. The state isn’t expected to immediately appeal the stay.
“Panetti’s assertion of severe mental illness are in doubt when compared to the multiple past findings on his sanity, competency to stand trial and competency to be executed, as well as evidence submitted by the state,” said Ellen Stewart-Klein, an assistant Texas attorney general, according to AP. “Panetti’s case is an inappropriate one to create a new rule of law.”
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http://www.npr.org/2014/12/03/368282918/texas-puts-execution-of-mentally-ill-man-on-hold
Texas Puts Execution Of Mentally Ill Man On Hold
By Wade Goodwyn, December 3, 2014
A federal appeals court stayed the execution of Scott Panetti in Texas on Wednesday. He was scheduled to die for murdering his mother and father-in-law. Panetti is mentally ill and his case is focused attention on capital punishment and mental illness.
MELISSA BLOCK: In Texas, the execution of a mentally ill man convicted of a double murder has been put on hold. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals wants more time to consider Scott Panetti's case and his chronic mental illness. Panetti has a 36-year history of schizophrenia. He was committed to mental institutions more than a dozen times before the murders. Still, at trial he was allowed to defend himself. His case and the subsequent appeals have gained international attention. NPR's Wade Goodwyn joins us to tell us more from Dallas. And Wade, Scott Panetti was just seven hours away from execution, then the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in. What more did the court say about its reasons for the stay?
WADE GOODWYN: Well, not a whole lot more than you said - it said that the case is complex, as it acknowledged in the ruling. And in the 20 years since Scott Panetti was convicted and sentenced to death, the laws have changed kind of as a consequence of Supreme Court rulings in the Panetti case itself and sometimes in reaction to Panetti's case. So the Fifth Circuit is saying hold your horses on the execution tonight. We want to hear the issues, so please prepare oral arguments. And to me, that seems to indicate that the court wants to hear whatever Panetti's lawyers want to argue.
BLOCK: Now, what's not in doubt here, Wade, is Scott Panetti's guilt for these two murders. Reminds us about the details of this case.
GOODWYN: No, there's no question about that. He killed his estranged wife's in-laws in front of his wife and young daughter - shot them to death with a 30-aught-six that he sawed off because, according to his family, he'd come to believe the in-laws were guided by the devil. Before he did this, Panetti had been committed to mental hospitals 14 times, but the illness was relentless. And one day his wife came home to find him burying the furniture in the yard, and she said, you know, Scott, what are you doing? And he said the devil had gotten into the furniture, and then he ran inside and began nailing the curtains closed to keep Satan out.
You know, what's important here is Panetti's long documented history of mental illness. It's what makes the case legally compelling. He's not some guy who killed someone and then tried to claim afterwards he was temporarily insane.
BLOCK: And that's the key legal issue that the appeals court is going to be considering - whether Scott Panetti's mental illness should stop him from being executed. How are those arguments likely to play out?
GOODWYN: Well, I mean now we're not talking about how Panetti was then, but how ill is he now, because in 2007 in the Panetti case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Texas couldn't execute Panetti if he didn't understand why he was being executed. His lawyers say he's had this ongoing delusion that he's being executed 'cause he's preaching the gospel to other death row inmates. But the state has responded - and the Texas courts have upheld them - that Panetti understands well enough, and therefore he should be put to death. So that's the biggest issue before the court. Should Panetti get a competency hearing 'cause he hasn't had one in seven years since the Supreme Court ruled in that case?
BLOCK: Finally, Wade, what has the reaction been to this decision today to postpone this execution?
GOODWYN: Oh, I think in Texas it's been one of relief, largely. The case was on Governor Rick Perry's desk, and there was a lot of pressure on Perry both to commute Panetti's sentence to life in prison or to go ahead and execute Panetti because he's guilty. And Perry would like to run for president again, so now it's not up to him to save or kill Panetti. He's been saved by the Fifth Circuit.
BLOCK: That's NPR's Wade Goodwyn. We were talking about the U.S. Court of Appeals order that halted the execution of Scott Panetti in Texas. Wade, thanks so much.
GOODWYN: It's my pleasure.
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Court Relieves Rick Perry From Death Penalty Dilemma
BY LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, December 3, 2014
A U.S. Appeals Court's decision to issue a stay of a mentally ill man on Texas' death row just hours before he was scheduled to be executed means that Texas Governor Rick Perry no longer needs to make a difficult decision on whether the execution should proceed.
Perry could have granted a 30 day stay - the only option under his authority - but he remained mum on the issue, despite pressure from anti-death penalty groups, the United Nations and even some conservatives who don't necessarily oppose the death penalty. They said Scott Panetti's mental state should preclude him from execution. He is a schizophrenic with a long history of mental illness who was convicted of killing his in-laws in 1995.
The court's action means that the potential 2016 presidential candidate won't have to act on the case now that it has returned to the judicial system, but Perry's record on the death penalty during his 14 year service as governor is clear, and it's an issue that could come into play should he officially launch a presidential run.
Since Perry came into office in 2000, he has overseen 319 executions, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice - that's more than half of the 517 executions Texas has conducted since the death penalty was reinstated in 1982. While the number of executions has been declining in Texas since its peak of 40 in 2000, it far outpaces any other state in the nation.
Perry's record on the death penalty has raised plenty of concerns from opponents after he declined to halt executions in several controversial cases. One was the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, a case where the evidence is still in question but was recently determined by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles not to recommend a posthumous pardon.
Perry has commuted 28 sentences since 2000, according to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, the state agency that must recommend commutation before Perry can act. Most of those occurred in 2005 when the Supreme Court ruled that minors could not be executed. Perry has used his allowable authority to act independently of the board in just two cases since 2000, when he issued a 30 day reprieve.
The death penalty momentarily became a campaign issue during Perry's 2012 presidential run. During a Republican primary debate in September of 2011 when moderator Brian Williams of NBC News noted that he Texas executed 234 people under his governorship at the time, a fact that drew loud applause from the GOP audience.
In his response, Perry said that he's "never struggled" with the possibility that an innocent person has been executed, calling Texas' justice system "thoughtful" and "clear."
"If you come into our state, you kill one of our children, kill a police officer, involved in a crime and kill one our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that means you will be executed," Perry said.
If Perry mounts another presidential campaign, the death penalty is unlikely to be a major campaign issue as big-picture ideas like the economy or foreign policy tend to dominate voters' moods, and public opinion is shifting. Support of the death penalty has dropped about 20 points over the past two decades, according to national polls. A Pew study from March of 2014 found that 55 percent of Americans supported the death penalty - a majority but far less than the 78 percent that supported it in 1993.
Republicans, however, are more supportive. In the same Pew study, 71 percent support it compared to 45 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of independents.
But Marc Hyden with Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty said conservative attitudes are shifting as well. He said that when he debuted his group at a popular conservative conference, CPAC, in 2012, he was concerned about the reception he would receive. Now Hyden points to three letters sent to Perry urging him to commute Panetti's sentence. One letter was sent by a group of evangelical pastors, another by former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and third by a broad group of conservatives, including former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who don't necessarily oppose the death penalty but do in the Panetti case because of the proven tragic mental state of Panetti.
Cal Jillson, political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said it was "probably in Perry's best interest" that the courts intervened, considering Perry's higher political aspirations.
"Perry's great strength has been that he channels the Texas political culture, the Texas swagger, pitch perfectly," Jillson said. "If he runs (for president), he wants to run as a staunch advocate but doesn't want to run as irrationally cold and heartless."
Falling public opinion has translated to mode states abolishing the death penalty. Since 2007, New Jersey, New Mexico, Maryland, Illinois and Connecticut made up the latest of the 18 states that have rid their criminal justice system of it. But none of those states are critical to the Republican nominating process and none of the those states are likely to vote for Rick Perry in a general election as they are all states that tend to vote for Democrats nationally.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30316117
US court orders execution stay for mentally ill man
December 3, 2014
A US appeals court has halted the execution of a schizophrenic Texas inmate who was due to be put to death on Wednesday.
The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals granted the reprieve less than eight hours before killer Scott Panetti was due to receive a lethal injection.
His lawyers had argued he was too delusional to be executed and sought a delay so his competency can be tested.
Panetti was convicted in the fatal shootings of his in-laws in 1992.
The US Supreme Court in 2002 prohibited the execution of the mentally impaired, but have allowed it for mentally ill inmates with a rational understanding.
A number of conservatives leaders had joined the fight to save Panetti's life, writing a letter asking Texas Governor Rick Perry to commute the death sentence to life in prison.
"As conservatives, we must be on guard that such an extraordinary government sanction not be used against a person who is mentally incapable of rational thought," according to the letter.
"It would be immoral for the government to take this man's life."
Ellen Stewart-Klein, an assistant Texas attorney general, meanwhile told that appeals court Panetti's medical records "strongly indicate rational awareness of his impending execution and the reason for it".
"Panetti's mental status has at best been severely exaggerated by his counsel," she added.
On Monday, in a separate appeal to halt the lethal injection, Panetti's lawyers told the US Supreme Court the Texas inmate was severely mentally ill "before, during and after the crime for which he has been sentenced to death".
Panetti was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1978 and hospitalised more than a dozen times before killing Joe and Amanda Alvarado.
"Imposition of the death penalty on people with severe mental illness, as with people with intellectual disability, does not serve the two goals of deterrence and retribution because of their reduced moral culpability," his lawyers told the court.
The Supreme Court added a provision mandating that an inmate have a rational understanding of why he was being put to death in 2007 under a previous appeal from Panetti.
His case has gone to the high court for review at least five times since his 1995 conviction, records show.
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Stay of execution for Texas death row killer who defended himself in a cowboy costume
December 3, 2014
Scott Panetti was supposed to be dead tonight. But just hours before his death row sentence was carried out, a federal appeals court in the United States halted the Texas inmate's execution.
Panetti killed his estranged wife's parents in 1995, after years of hospitalizations for mental illness. During his trial, he dressed in a purple cowboy outfit and called himself "Sarge." His lawyers argue that it is unconstitutional and immoral to put him to death.
"Scott Panetti has been ill with schizophrenia for 36 years and it manifests itself with religious delusions" says Kathryn Kase, the executive director of the Texas Defender Service. "He believes he's part of an epic struggle between good and evil."
When Panetti's family told him his execution had been delayed, he began praising the Lord, Kase tells guest host Laura Lynch.
He killed his in-laws in front of his wife and 3-year-old daughter because he believed the devil had possessed them, Kase explains.
During his trial, Panetti defended himself in what Kase calls "a dime-story cowboy outfit." He explained to the jury that his alter-ego "Sgt. Ironhorse" had committed the murders. He tried to call John F. Kennedy, Jesus Christ and the Pope as witnesses.
"One would have thought that the judge would have required him to have a lawyer," says Kase. "But instead his response was 'Move along, Mr. Panetti.'"
She says the fact that no court ever found Panetti incompetent or insane points to a failure of the system, since his mental illness was well-documented for 14 years before he went to trial.
Many prominent conservatives have rallied to Panetti's cause. Kase says that shows that people's attitudes are changing. And that makes her hopeful that Panetti will not be put to death.
"We've reached a consensus that the seriously mentally-ill should not be executed," she says.
"Yes, a jury sentenced him to death in 1995 because they were afraid of the crazy man. But today people across the United States are saying, 'No, this mentally-ill man must be protected from the death penalty."
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Behind the Christian Conservative Push To Save Scott Panetti
By Betsy Woodruff, December 3, 2014
Scott Panetti is a mentally ill prisoner on death row in Texas who was supposed to be executed on Tuesday night. But after massive public outcry opposing his killing, the fifth circuit court of appeals stayed his execution.
A surprising group of conservative political movers was part of that outcry. Richard Viguerie, the godfather of direct mail whose website features a petition calling for Obama’s impeachment, was key in rallying social conservatives for Panetti. Pat Nolan, director of the American Conservative Union Foundation’s Center for Criminal Justice Reform, said he only followed Panetti’s case in passing until Viguerie called him up about it.
“I’ve been reading some things but haven’t really focused on it,” Nolan told Viguerie
“He said, ‘Well, please do,’” Nolan recalls.
The two of them penned a Washington Times op-ed along with conservative Media Research Center head Brent Bozell opposing his execution.
“The authority to take a man’s life is the most draconian penalty that we allow our government to exercise,” they wrote. “As conservatives, we must be on guard that such an extraordinary government sanction not be used against a person who is mentally incapable of rational thought.”
They also sent a letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, signed by about two-dozen other conservative leaders, asking him to commute Panetti’s sentence.
“It would be immoral for the government to take this man’s life,” they wrote.
The letter’s signers include author Maggie Gallagher, a prominent opponent of same-sex marriage; David Keene, former president of the NRA; Ken Cuccinelli; Leadership Institute president Morton Blackwell; and former Republican presidential challenger Gary Bauer.
Bozell––speaking for himself and not for his organization––said he opposes the death penalty because he’s not convinced it deters crime. He added that his opposition to the death penalty has more to do with his Roman Catholicism than his conservatism.
“I have a strong affection for life, and the protection of life at both ends of the spectrum,” he said.
Nolan also cited his faith when explaining his opposition to Panetti’s execution.
“As Christians, we believe that every single human being has worth, that we’re created by God in love,” he said.
This might not sound like standard operating procedure for right-wingers, but it actually isn’t that unusual. There’s long been a strong contingent of social conservatives focusing on criminal justice reform, and that group includes Nolan, Keene, and Viguerie, as well as Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist and representatives from the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. They started meeting regularly after the 2004 elections, as I reported earlier this year for National Review, and they focus on mandatory minimum drug sentencing reform and other issues regarding incarceration.
The conservative push-back against Panetti’s execution wasn’t an official move that group made. But because influential social conservatives who focus on criminal justice reform know each other and communicate regularly about those issues, it wasn’t hard for them to organize their efforts for Panetti.
“I really think it’s an answer to prayer that the 5th circuit has put a stay on the execution,” said Nolan.
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/scott-panettis-lawyers-make-last-ditch-pleas-to-stop-texas-e
Scott Panetti Will Not Be Executed In Texas Tonight
The schizophrenic man was scheduled to be executed Wednesday for killing his wife’s parents. [Update: A federal appeals court has issued a stay of execution, which the state is not going to appeal immediately, meaning the execution will not go forward at this time.]
WASHINGTON — Lawyers for Scott Panetti have multiple requests pending before Justice Antonin Scalia, asking the justice to stop Texas from executing their client at 6 p.m. CT Wednesday.
Panetti was sentenced to death in 1995 for the double-murder of his then-wife’s parents, faced more than a decade of hospitalizations related to his schizophrenia before the 1992 killings, and has been challenging his competency or execution sentence for much of the time since trial.
In addition to the stay requests at the Supreme Court, there also are requests for the court to grant his habeas corpus petition and declare that he cannot be constitutionally executed due to his serious mental illness.
Panetti’s lawyers are asking the Supreme Court to “review this case to determine whether the imposition of the death penalty on offenders with severe mental illness offends contemporary standards of decency.”
Put together, the requests ultimately ask the court to issue a stay of execution in Panetti’s case, accept and hear his case, and rule that it violates the Eighth Amendment to execute a person like Panetti. Scalia could rule on the stay requests himself, or — more likely — refer the requests to the full court.
Texas officials, in a Tuesday filing, opposed the requests and were incredulous of his ultimate request, stating that it “would undermine the sentences of a majority of the nation’s death row inmates.” They went on to claim that Panetti did not cite to “a single example” where a court extended the categorical protection from execution extended to those with intellectual disabilities to those with serious mental illness.
Additionally, the state continued to press earlier claims that “Panetti’s mental health condition has long been exaggerated to his benefit.”
Beyond the Supreme Court, Panetti’s lawyers still have another request pending before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, appealing a district court’s denial of counsel appointment to press a competency claim and a related stay of execution. That request makes Supreme Court action unlikely until the 5th Circuit resolves those claims because it is expected Panetti’s lawyers also would ask for Supreme Court review of that decision if denied a stay from that court.
Finally, there is Gov. Rick Perry, from whom Panetti’s lawyers are asking for a stay of execution. The state Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously recommended against reprieve or commutation on Dec. 1, leaving Perry only with the option of a 30-day stay of execution.
In this effort, Panetti’s lawyers are not alone. Among those asking Perry to spare Panetti’s life are a group of conservatives — from Gary Bauer to Ken Cuccinelli — who wrote to Perry, “As conservatives, we must be on guard that such an extraordinary government sanction not be used against a person who is mentally incapable of rational thought. It would be immoral for the government to take this man’s life.”
Update — 11:47 a.m. Wednesday: The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of execution. The stay is only issued “pending further order of the court,” which is expected to set a schedule for consideration of Panetti’s appeal.
Update — 11:47 a.m. Wednesday: The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of execution. The stay is only issued "pending further order of the court," which is expected to set a schedule for consideration of Panetti's appeal.
It was not immediately clear whether that unannounced schedule would cause a delay of execution beyond Wednesday. It also was not immediately clear whether Texas would, or even could, try to seek further review at this time in order to proceed with the scheduled execution.
UPDATE
An official with the Texas Attorney General’s Office told BuzzFeed News the state will not immediately appeal the stay of execution issued by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. The state will present its arguments to the 5th Circuit when a schedule is determined by the court, the official added. Dec. 3, 2014, at 6:21 p.m.
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http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/03/social-pressure-works-court-orders-stay
Social Pressure Works: Court Orders Stay of Execution for Scott Panetti
Stephanie Slade | Dec. 3, 2014
Earlier today, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the imminent execution of a convicted murderer named Scott Panetti. He was set to be killed less than eight hours later at 6 p.m. local time.
The reasoning given was "to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter." It's not clear what new information or "late arriving" developments sparked the decision, but it seems highly likely that sustained, vocal opposition from a large number of conservative leaders, including former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, played a role. A letter signed by nearly two-dozen such individuals argues that Panetti is not of sound mind and that, as a result, taking his life would be immoral.
Said Marc Hyden of the group Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty in a statement after the announcement:
Political conservatives and Evangelicals from Ron Paul to Jay Sekulow have helped awaken our nation to what many view as a travesty of justice. Texas was about to cross a line by executing a severely mentally ill man. A wide array of conservative and faith leaders have spoken out in record numbers about this case. We have made it abundantly clear that numerous conservatives and Evangelicals view executing those who are mentally ill as a violation of our values as Americans. Conservatives have demonstrated we are firmly part of what appears to be a national consensus against executing people who are mentally ill.
See my colleague Lauren Galik's discussion of the Panetti case here.
Read my examination of shifting conservative attitudes about capital punishment here.
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http://www.vice.com/read/a-court-just-blocked-texas-from-executing-a-paranoid-schizophrenic-1203
A Court Just Stopped Texas from Executing a Paranoid Schizophrenic
by Katie Halper, December 3, 2014
On Wednesday, less than eight hours before the scheduled lethal injection of Scott Panetti, a US federal appeals court halted the execution of the paranoid schizophrenic man, who his lawyers say is too mentally incompetent to be killed by the state.
I've been following this case closely, and I was pretty sure that the next time I wrote about Scott Panetti, he would be dead. After all, on Monday the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 7-0 against granting clemency to Panetti, and in Texas, a governor can't grant clemency without a recommendation from the Board. So even if Governor Rick Perry had wanted to spare Panetti—and I'm pretty sure he didn't—the man's hands were tied.
But after denials from lower courts, and in fewer than 40 words, the Fifth Circuit Court blocked the execution.
"We STAY the execution pending further order of the court to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter. An order setting a briefing schedule and oral argument will follow," reads the court order.
Panetti's lawyers maintain that their client, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia for the first time in 1978—and killed his in-laws in 1992—should not have been allowed to represent himself in his original trial. For starters, he was hospitalized over a dozen times over the 14 years leading up to his arrest. During his trial, which observers described as a circus and a farce, Panetti called on 200 witnesses and wore a purple cowboy suit. But Panetti's lawyers are focusing on his mental state right now, which seems to have deteriorated considerably. (He apparently believes his execution is the result of a conspiracy between Texas and the Devil to stop him from preaching the gospel.)
But the stay isn't about whether or not Panetti is competent—instead, it's about whether he has the right to lawyers with the tools to litigate his incompetence.
Panetti's attorneys are pro-bono. As his co-counsel Katherine Kase told me last week, "Due process demands that he be given resources so that he can be effectively represented. And without an investigation and psychologists, Texas can't say that he's been given due process."
Panetti hasn't been evaluated in seven years—even though, in theory, he can't be executed unless he's known to be competent. His lawyers want to be officially appointed as his counsel so they can hire a forensic psychologist to evaluate their client. The legal team has also issued a stay request to the US Supreme Court, arguing that because of Panetti's mental illness, his execution would violate the Eighth Amendment's protection from cruel and unusual punishment.
Though the lower courts denied this stay, a dissenting judge on Texas's Court of Criminal Appeals not only agreed that the severely mentally ill should be categorically protected from execution, but that the capital punishment should be abolished. It is expected that the Supreme Court won't decide whether to hear the case until after the Fifth Circuit reconvenes and reaches a definitive conclusion of its own. We don't know when those hearings will begin or end.
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http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/662520-execution-stayed-for-mentally-ill-prisoner.html
Execution stayed for mentally ill prisoner
By AFP, Dec 04, 2014
A US federal appeals court has stayed the execution of a schizophrenic man just hours before he was scheduled to die in Texas by lethal injection.
Scott Panetti, who has suffered from the mental illness for three decades, was set to die for the 1992 shooting of his estranged wife's parents at point blank range.
The Fifth Circuit Court issued the decision, which cannot be appealed, in order "to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter."
Panetti's lawyers requested more time so that psychiatric evaluation could be conducted to determine their client's criminal liability, an evaluation that they said had not been carried out in seven years.
Panetti won support for his case from the likes of the Mental Health America advocacy organization, psychiatrists, former judges, prosecutors and religious groups.
The case also garnered interest from the European Union, which urged Texas Governor Rick Perry to grant Panetti clemency.
"We believe that today's ruling is the first step in a process which will clearly demonstrate that Mr Panetti is too severely mentally ill to be executed," his lawyers Greg Wiercioch and Kathryn Kase said in a statement.
"Mr Panetti's illness, schizophrenia, was present for years prior to the crime, profoundly affected his trial, and appears to have worsened in recent years," they said.
At the trial, Panetti acted as his own attorney, wore a cowboy outfit and tried to call the pope, John F. Kennedy and Jesus as witnesses. He was convicted in 1995.
Panetti had been scheduled for execution at 6:00 pm (00H01 Thursday) at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas.
Neither the Supreme Court nor Perry had yet weighed in on the appeal.
The stay was issued by the Fifth Circuit under a statute allowing it to preserve its jurisdiction over the case, and which prohibits appeal to any other body, according to Panetti's defense team.
Panetti has been hospitalized a dozen times for hallucinations and psychotic episodes.
AFP
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Federal court stays execution of Wisconsin native Scott Panetti
By Meg Kissinger, December 4, 2014
Houston — The gurney was cleaned, the needles were lined up.
Scott Panetti was saying goodbye to his parents late Wednesday morning when the word came: For the second time in a little more than a decade, his execution was being delayed with just hours to spare.
A federal appeals court put the execution on hold so that it could consider "late arriving and complex legal questions" about the case, chiefly the argument that Panetti is too mentally ill to kill, even in Texas where executions are so common that a local radio station mentioned it just after a story about a new tax levy.
Panetti, 56, once buried furniture in the backyard, convinced the devil was trying to kill him and his family. He tried to nail the curtains shut to keep the blood from soaking in through the walls.
That was six years before he shaved his head, took a sawed-off deer rifle and shot his wife's parents dead.
Details of his criminal case were so outrageous — he represented himself wearing a purple cowboy outfit and tried to subpoena Jesus Christ — that even some of the staunchest death penalty supporters petitioned to have him spared. They worried that the outcry from his execution would sour the public appetite for the death penalty altogether.
Kathryn Kase, one of Panetti's lawyers, paced nervously in her office early Wednesday when the email arrived from the federal appeals court with news that the stay had been granted.
She was on the phone with her colleague, Gregory Wierioch, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, who heads up Panetti's volunteer defense team. He had spent several hours at the prison Tuesday with Panetti.
"Holy cow! We've got a stay," Kase shouted.
After weeks of failed appeals in the Texas state court system, the attorneys had been waiting for word on three fronts: the federal district court, which could order more time for Panetti's lawyers to have him examined; the U.S. Supreme Court, which could grant a petition to cancel the execution on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual punishment; or Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who could issue a 30-day stay.
The Rev. Jeff Hood, a Baptist minister from Dallas, had begun a prayer vigil outside the Huntsville prison. Some 21 hours into his vigil, when word of the stay came, Hood said simply: "God answers prayers."
Bruce Curry, who prosecuted the case in 1995 and remains the Kerr County district attorney, declined to comment on Wednesday, calling it a "pending matter."
Panetti's sister, Victoria, had flown in from Switzerland. She has circulated a petition, signed by more than 80,000 people worldwide, asking for mercy. She said the family wanted privacy and declined to talk about the case.
Panetti's sister, Victoria, had flown in from Switzerland. She has circulated a petition, signed by more than 80,000 people worldwide, asking for mercy. She said the family wanted privacy and declined to talk about the case.
Panetti's mother, Yvonne Panetti, a retired Rusk County mail carrier, has talked for years about the day her son would die. She vowed to be at his side when the executioner pierces his vein with the needle that will deliver the lethal poison.
"Maybe they can throw him away like trash," Yvonne Panetti told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a 1999 interview. "But that's not what he is. He's a human being, who was sick, but no one would help."
Panetti's lawyers issued a statement that read in part: "Mr. Panetti has not had a competency evaluation in seven years, and we believe that today's ruling is the first step in a process which will clearly demonstrate that Mr. Panetti is too severely mentally ill to be executed."
The statement also said: "We would like to remember the Alvarado family today and express our deepest sympathies for the loss of Amanda and Joe Alvarado."
There's still a chance that Panetti, born in Hayward, Wis., and a member of the Poynette High School Class of 1976, will be put to death.
The two-sentence order from the federal court of appeals in New Orleans said only that it needed more time to consider Panetti's fate. It said a schedule for legal briefs and oral arguments on the matters would be set.
Very likely the court will have Panetti examined by psychologists to determine if he understands why he is to be executed. That was the standard established in his own case the last time his execution was halted, in 2004.
The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled in 2007 that a person facing execution had to fully grasp why he or she was being put to death.
Panetti was examined by five experts the next year. Three said he was not competent; two said he was. The judge accepted the findings of the minority and reissued the order to execute Panetti.
His lawyers say Panetti's illness has become progressively worse and he believes that he is being put to death by Satan as a way to stop him from preaching the Bible on death row. The state's lawyers say Panetti is faking.
The landmark case has drawn international outrage from mental health and human rights advocates. They have been joined by a coalition of libertarian politicians, led by former presidential candidate Ron Paul, and evangelical Christians who say the government is not capable of staging a proper execution.
Wierioch and Kase, of the Texas Defender Service, embraced Wednesday's order as a sign that society will no longer tolerate executing people whose crimes were the direct result of their mental illness.
"Look at Andrea Yates," Kase said, referring to the Texas woman who drowned all five of her children in 2001 after suffering postpartum depression. "People were lining the streets protesting to make sure she was going to be sentenced to death. By the time her trial was over, more people were rallying to make sure she was given treatment for her mental illness."
Many have questioned why Kase and the other death penalty lawyers fight so hard to spare Panetti when he is guilty.
"We don't kill people with illnesses that cause them to do things they would not ordinarily do," she said. "No one would choose to have chronic paranoid schizophrenia."
Before Wednesday's ruling came in, Kase said she was hopeful.
"I believe we are better than this," she said. Cases like Panetti's, distasteful as they are, "force us to be our best self."
Still, there is a long way to go, she said.
Andre Thomas, Panetti's death row mate, poked out his own eye, believing that God had instructed him to do so for murdering his wife and two children and then ripping their hearts out with his bare hands.
Once on death row, he gouged out his other eye and ate it. Thomas does not have an execution date.
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http://www.jsonline.com/multimedia/video/?bctid=3922078088001
Panetti's attorney speaks on Texas court's decision
Dec. 3, 2014
Houston Attorney Katheryn Kase, one of the lawyers representing Scott Panetti, talks with Meg Kissinger about the Fifth Federal District Court's stay of execution decision.
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Court orders stay of execution for man with local ties
Frank Zufall, December 3, 2014
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Court has issued today, Dec. 3, a stay of execution in Texas for Scott Panetti, 56, concerning the 1992 murders of his in-laws, Joe and Amanda Alvarado.
Panetti’s execution was set for Wednesday, Dec. 3, at 6 p.m.
The Texas judicial system reports Panetti’s “native county” as “Hayward, Wisconsin.” The “Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,” which has been reporting on Panetti’s story since 1999, has consistently described him as a “Hayward native.”
Panetti’s lawyers have argued their client has a well-documented history as a paranoid schizophrenic who should have never represented himself in his 1995 trial where he dressed up like a 1930s Hollywood Cowboy star and issued subpoenas for 200, including President John F. Kennedy, Jesus Christ and even the Pope. On the stand, Panetti assumed the personality of Sarge, who recounted the murders with sound effects.
Filing in federal court, Panetti’s attorneys have argued his execution should not go forward because he “lacked a rational understanding of the connection between his crime and the punishment" and under a 1986 Supreme Court ruling, "Ford vs. Wainwrigth,” a ruling that prohibits states from executing a person who is incompetent to understand the “reality or reason for their punishment.”
During the month of November, Panetti’s attorneys filed appeals to stay the execution but all were denied.
The Fifth Circuit’s decision came roughly 12 hours before Panetti would have been executed at 6 p.m.
“We STAY the execution pending further order of the court to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter,” wrote the Fifth Circuit Court.
Panetti’s legal team, Greg Wiercioch of University of Wisconsin Law School and Kathryn Kase of Texas Defender Service, issued the following statement:
"We are grateful that the court stayed tonight’s scheduled execution of Scott Panetti, a man who has suffered from schizophrenia for three decades, for a careful review of the issues surrounding his competency. Mr. Panetti's illness, schizophrenia, was present for years prior to the crime, profoundly affected his trial, and appears to have worsened in recent years.
“Mr. Panetti has not had a competency evaluation in seven years, and we believe that today's ruling is the first step in a process which will clearly demonstrate that Mr. Panetti is too severely mentally ill to be executed.
“We would like to remember the Alvarado family today and express our deepest sympathies for the loss of Amanda and Joe Alvarado.
“We believe that people who live with severe mental illness should have treatment options to keep themselves and others safe. When people who have severe mental illness enter our criminal justice system, the system has a moral obligation to respond appropriately.”
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Condemned inmate gets stay of execution
By Michelle Casady | December 3, 2014
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay for condemned inmate Scott Louis Panetti on Wednesday morning — hours before he was set to be executed in Huntsville for the 1992 murders of his parents-in-law at their Fredericksburg home.
Panetti, 56, would have been the eleventh inmate executed in Texas this year.
In a one-paragraph order, the 5th Circuit justices said they would stay the execution “pending further order of the court to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter.” New oral arguments before the court will follow, the order stated.
Panetti’s case put a spotlight on whether a defendant has to be sane enough to understand why he is being put to death. While Panetti, diagnosed as schizophrenic in 1978, understands that he was sentenced to death for the killings of Jose and Amanda Alvarado, he has repeatedly stated he believes the true reason the state plans to execute him is to prevent him from preaching the Gospel to other inmates.
In the 11 years prior to the murders, Panetti was hospitalized 14 time for psychosis and delusions. Neighbors who spoke to the Express-News under the condition of anonymity in the days that followed the killings described him as “unstable” and an “intense person” prone to violent mood swings.
“He was a Rambo-type character if there ever was one. But when things were going good for him, he was the nicest guy you ever met,” one neighbor said.
The shootings happened a week after estranged wife Sonja Alvarado, citing Panetti’s violent tendencies and drinking habits, filed a restraining order against him. The order was supposed to prevent him from visiting her parents’ house, where she lived, to see her or their then-3-year-old daughter, Amanda.
Panetti was convicted of capital murder in 1995 after being allowed to represent himself at his trial, during which he dressed as a cowboy and occasionally spoke as an alter-ego named Sgt.Ranahan Ironhose, who he said committed the murders. He also attempted to subpoena John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ as witnesses.
It took jurors 90 minutes to determine he was guilty and two hours to decide his sentence would be death. In 1995, life without parole was not a sentencing option for capital murder. Jurors could pick only between execution or life in prison, but with parole a possibility after 35 years.
Having been on death row for 19 years now, Panetti’s wait for execution has been well beyond the 11-year average cited by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
In 2007, his case was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. Lawyers for the state, including then-solicitor general Ted Cruz, argued that while he “plainly has some mental illness,” Panetti was exaggerating his symptoms according to six psychiatrists who examined him. The justices disagreed, and in a 5-4 decision sent his case back to the 5th Circuit Court for review. The 5th Court had decided again that he was fit to be executed prior to issuing Tuesday’s stay.
Panetti’s case has garnered international attention, including protests from the American Bar Association, evangelical leaders, the European Union and United Nations human rights investigators.
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http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2014-12-05/quote-of-the-week/
Quote of the Week
FRI., DEC. 5, 2014
Quote of the Week
"Rather than serving as a measured response to murder, the execution of Mr. Panetti would only serve to undermine the public's faith in a fair and moral justice system."
– A letter addressed to Gov. Rick Perry and signed by 21 conservative leaders, urging the governor to commute schizophrenic death row inmate Scott Panetti's sentence to life in prison. The 5th Circuit has stayed his planned Dec. 3 execution date.
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http://www.texasmonthly.com/daily-post/state-texas-december-4-2014
DAILY ROUNDUP - December 4, 2014
A Sane Decision — Yesterday, with eight hours to go before the state executed Scott Panetti, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halted the state's actions. While outcry against the execution of the clearly mentally ill man came from all corners, at least one prominent Republican hedged his bets: Ted Cruz. In an irony-packed statement, the Senator from Texas distances himself from conservatives who called for the stay, saying, "I don't think it's appropriate for me, as an elected official who does not currently have a role in the criminal justice system, to be getting involved in the adjudication of any particular case." A stay was also submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that appeal will be put aside for now. "Because the [appeals court] order 'isn't a ruling on the merits of our claims, there's nothing for the Supreme Court to overturn,' the attorneys said in a statement," according to the National Journal. "The Fifth Circuit may lift its stay following further consideration of the case, however."
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http://kxan.com/2014/12/03/texas-execution-case-is-only-latest-with-mental-illness-concerns/
Texas execution case is only latest with mental illness concerns
By Kevin Schwaller, December 3, 2014,
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Before the case of Scott Panetti, the man who was set to be executed before a stay, Texas executed other convicted criminals who their attorneys say suffered from mental illness.
In 2004, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended clemency for convicted killer Kelsey Patterson, 50, who was set for execution. Texas Governor Rick Perry said no.
“The fact of the matter is this was a very, very dangerous individual,” said Perry in 2004. “I think that there was a clear reasoning that even in the prison population, he would try to kill again.”
Patterson’s lawyer says Patterson was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
“Texas has a long, sorted history of putting individuals to death in spite of significant evidence of their severe mental illness,” said Kristin Houlé, executive director of Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Houlé started following the issue years ago. Houlé also calls the move to recommend clemency by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles a rare one.
“This is a board that has recommended clemency four times since 1982 in cases of an individual facing imminent execution — four times out of 518 executions,” she said.
Houlé says she has documented 26 cases of Texas executions involving individuals with severe mental illness since 1982 when Texas resumed executions.
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Federal appeals court halts execution for Texas prisoner Scott Panetti
Dec 03 2014
A federal appeals court has halted the scheduled execution of a Texas prisoner whose attorneys say is too delusional to be put to death. Syan Rhodes reports.
SETTLED. WE'RE LIVE TONIGHT, ANOUSHAH RASTA, KPRC LOCAL 2. JUST HOURS BEFORE IT WAS SET TO HAPPEN, AN APPEALS COURT IN TEXAS HAS STOPPED THE EXECUTION AFTER MENTALLY ILL DAY DEATHS ROW INMATE. HE WAS SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR KILLING HIS IN-LAWS IN FRONT OF HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER 22 YEARS ANTICIPATING. SYAN RHODES IS LIVE WITH WHAT'S NEXT IN THE CASE. Reporter: FIFTH CIRCUIT COURT APPEALS DECIDED TO POSTPONE THIS DISCUSSION OF PANETTATY TO SAY THEY NEEDED MORE TIME TO LOOK AT THE CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES. PANETTA WAS FOUND TO BE TOO MAEBL TO BE PUT TO DEATH. WEDNESDAY MORNING, A FAIRLY COURT SAID THEY WOULD STOP HIS PLANNED CONSTITUTION, GIVE LEGAL TEAM MORE TIME TO ARGUE THE CASE. TO BE ABLE TO OBTAIN A STAY WHEN YOU'RE LITERALLY LOOKING AT BEING STRAPPED TO THE GURNEY IN THE DEATHS CHAMBER WITHIN A MATTERED OF HOURS IS HERCULEAN, IS MONUMENTAL. HUGE. Reporter: BRIAN WICE SAYS THIS CASE, WHICH HAS GARNERED NATIONAL ATTENTION, IS SEEN AS A TEST. THIS IS A CASE THAT TOUCHES ALL OF THE HOT BUTTON ISSUES IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM. THE DEATH PENALTY, MENTAL ILLNESS, AND THE ABILITY OF FEDERAL COURTS TO STAY STATE EXECUTIONS. Reporter: MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCATES EXECUTING PANETTI IS WRONG. THIS IS A SERIOUSLY ILL MAN AND WE NEED TO STOP CRIMINALIZING NENLSZ MENTAL ILLNESSES AND MAKE SURE PEOPLE GET THE HELP THAT THEY NEED. YOU HAVE THE ATTORNEYS FROM THE STATE ATTORNEY GENERALS OFFICE CLAIMING THAT SCOTT PANETTI IS A MALINGERER USHERING A FAKER, SOMEONE WHO HAS MANAGED TO PUT ONE OVER OR IS ATTEMPT TO GO PUT ONE OVER ON BOTH JURORS AND JUDGES ALIKE. Reporter: AND WICE SAYS IT IS NOW POSSIBLE THE STATE COULD ASK THE SUPREME COURT TO SET
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Mentally Ill Texas Man, Scott Panetti, Granted Last-Minute Stay of Execution; Christian Leaders Urge Gov. Perry to Show Mercy
By Stoyan Zaimov, December 4, 2014
Scott Panetti, a severely mentally ill man who was scheduled to be executed on Wednesday in Texas for the murder of his parents-in-law, was granted a last-minute stay of execution by a federal appeals court. A number of Christian leaders had spoken out about his case, and asked Texas Gov. Rick Perry to show mercy toward the man.
"We stay the execution pending further order of the court to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter," the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans stated. "An order setting a briefing schedule and oral argument will follow."
Panetti, who has suffered from schizophrenia and a number of other mental illnesses for the past 30 years, was scheduled to be put to death on Wednesday in Huntsville for the 1992 double murder of his in-laws, Joe and Amanda Alvarado of Kerr County.
Although the 56-year-old man has stated that he believes he is being executed for preaching the Gospel and that he is in a spiritual battle with Satan, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to deny him a stay of execution on Monday.
Earlier on Wednesday, The Reverend Dr. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, wrote an open letter to Perry, asking him to show mercy and spare Panetti's life.
"In situations like this one, courts have no mechanism to administer mercy, they are all about the law. Mercy rests with the executive branch, so it is in the Governor's purview. If ever there was a time for mercy, it is in this case. A merciful commuting of the death sentence to life is the morally correct thing to do," Schenck wrote.
"The Governor should do everything in his power to commute Mr. Panetti's sentence, even if it is temporary. In my prayer for the Governor just weeks ago I spoke of those that act in truth even at great cost. This may cost the Governor something, but it would be well worth it because it's the good and right thing to do."
The Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition and pastor of Church on the Hill in Washington, D.C., added: "We pray and appeal to Gov. Perry and the State of Texas to commute this execution of a person who has serious mental challenges. Justice will not be served in this case and it is simply barbaric to take the life of a person struggling with mental illness. We need to work for an America where the dignity and value of life is embraced and not diminished. Sadly in this case, that is not happening."
Over 50 Evangelical leaders had signed a letter earlier this month asking that the mentally ill man be given life in prison instead.
Panetti's legal team, Greg Wiercioch of University of Wisconsin Law School and Kathryn Kase of Texas Defender Service, noted that they are grateful that the court decided to stay the execution.
In their statement, the lawyers reminded the state of Texas that Panetti has not had a competency evaluation in seven years, and argued that his schizophrenia illness has worsened in recent years.
"We believe that people who live with severe mental illness should have treatment options to keep themselves and others safe. When people who have severe mental illness enter our criminal justice system, the system has a moral obligation to respond appropriately to the limitations and deficits presented by mental illness," the lawyers stated.
Panetti had initially been scheduled to be executed in 2004, but a federal judge stayed the order. The court is now expected to announce a timeframe for new oral arguments about his case.
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http://christiannewswire.com/news/45475207.html
Open Appeal to Gov. Perry to Commute Death Sentence
December 3, 2014
Contact: Raymond Moore, National Clergy Council, 202-546-8329
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3, 2014 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Reverend Dr. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, who prayed with and for Texas Governor Rick Perry last month, issues an open appeal to the Governor to mercifully commute the death sentence of Scott Panetti, a diagnosed schizophrenic.
Photo: Rev. Rob Schenck leads prayer for Gov. Rick Perry, seen looking up from table to lower left, Palm Beach, Fla., Nov. 15, 2015. Click for higher-resolution version.
Rev. Schenck said, "In situations like this one, courts have no mechanism to administer mercy, they are all about the law. Mercy rests with the executive branch, so it is in the Governor's purview. If ever there was a time for mercy, it is in this case. A merciful commuting of the death sentence to life is the morally correct thing to do. The Governor should do everything in his power to commute Mr. Panetti's sentence, even if it is temporary. In my prayer for the Governor just weeks ago I spoke of those that act in truth even at great cost. This may cost the Governor something, but it would be well worth it because it's the good and right thing to do."
Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition and pastor of Church on the Hill in Washington, D.C. states, "We pray and appeal to Gov. Perry and the State of Texas to commute this execution of a person who has serious mental challenges. Justice will not be served in this case and it is simply barbaric to take the life of a person struggling with mental illness. We need to work for an America where the dignity and value of life is embraced and not diminished. Sadly in this case, that is not happening."
Open appeal to the Governor from Reverend Dr. Rob Schenck:
Dear Governor Perry,
In this difficult hour of decision for you, I appeal to your conscience, informed by your Christian faith, to immediately commute the sentence of death for inmate Scott Panetti. As medical and court records indicate, Mr. Panetti suffers from a mentally debilitating disease that prevents him from distinguishing between fantasy and reality.
A long history of Christian moral theology, philosophy, and instruction requires that, in such circumstances, the perpetrator is not morally culpable for his acts. While this does not lift the need to protect society from future acts of violence by such a person, it does preclude the ultimate punishment of death.
On behalf of millions of Christians in Texas and throughout the country, and thousands of pastors and other church leaders, I urge you to exercise the power of your office and do what is right and good in this instance. I remind you of our prayer together last month in Palm Beach:
INVOCATION
Psalm 15
O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill?
He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart;
Who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend;
In whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord; who swears to his own hurt and does not change;
Shall we pray?
God--whose name and nature is true, help us always to act in truth--to love truth--more than we love our own spin on it.
Thank you for those in this room who are lovers of truth and who act on it at great personal risk; who have paid the price for their convictions. Help us all to be ready to do the same.
Bless those present: our host, our speaker, our honoree, and all around these tables.
We give thanks to You for your generous provision in this food--and for all the good things you give to us. Keep us mindful of those that are deprived of the good life, especially those that suffer because of tyranny, dictatorship, corruption, and violence. Help us to help them.
I ask these things in the name of the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Amen.
Click for Video: Rev. Rob Schenck prays for Gov. Rick Perry and others at dinner in Palm Beach, Florida on November 15, 2014
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Federal court halts controversial execution of Scott Panetti in Texas (+video)
The Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday stayed the execution of Scott Panetti, a Texas man convicted of killing the parents of his estranged wife, pending further competency evaluation.
By Jacob Axelrad, Staff writer DECEMBER 3, 2014
A federal appeals court in New Orleans has halted the execution of a Texas man whose case has attracted international attention and condemnation. The execution was stayed just eight hours before the execution, scheduled for Wednesday, so the court could "fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter."
Scott Panetti had been sentenced to death by lethal injection for the 1992 killing of his estranged wife's parents with a deer rifle in front of his wife and three-year-old daughter. However, Mr. Panetti's lawyers have argued he is too mentally ill to receive the death penalty and requested that his execution be halted until further competency tests could be administered. The attorneys say he has suffered from schizophrenia for decades and that putting him to death would violate his Eighth Amendment rights, which protect against cruel and unusual punishment. A number of religious and mental health groups have also come to his defense and have called for his sentence to be reduced.
"We are grateful that the court stayed tonight's scheduled execution of Scott Panetti," his attorneys, Greg Wiercioch and Kathryn Kase, said in a statement, according to The Guardian. "Mr. Panetti has not had a competency evaluation in seven years, and we believe that today's ruling is the first step in a process which will clearly demonstrate that Mr Panetti is too severely mentally ill to be executed."
Recommended: 5 countries where the death penalty is legal but rare
Panetti, who was born in Wisconsin and served in the US Navy before being honorably discharged at the age of 18, was first diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1978 at age 20. He was admitted to hospitals 13 times between 1978 and 1991. In 1986, he expressed feelings of "being controlled by an unseen power" and had "fears that the devil is after him," according to a timeline provided by his lawyers. The doctor comments provided in the timeline routinely note behavior associated with schizophrenia.
At his 1995 trial, where Panetti represented himself, he wore a cowboy costume and a purple bandanna and tried to call more than 200 witnesses, including Jesus, the pope, and President Kennedy.
"Widespread and diverse voices agree that Mr. Panetti's execution would cross a moral line and serve no retributive or deterrent value," said Kathryn Kase, Panetti's lead lawyer and executive director of the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit that represents people facing the death penalty, according to The New York Times.
But the state of Texas argues that Panetti is sufficiently aware of the crime he committed and that he "has been grossly exaggerating his symptoms while being observed." Conversely, in a description of the case on its site, the Texas Defender Service contends that Panetti is delusional to the point where he believes he is being executed "by Satan, working through the State of Texas, to put an end to Mr. Panetti’s preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the condemned."
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Court commended for staying execution of mentally ill man
December 3, 2014
Austin, Texas, Dec 3, 2014 / 03:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic bishops in Texas thanked a federal appeals court for issuing a stay of execution for mentally ill inmate Scott Louis Panetti mere hours before the state was due to carry out his capital punishment.
“The Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops today expressed appreciation to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for granting a stay of execution for death row inmate Scott Panetti,” a Dec. 3 statement from the Texas Catholic Conference read.
It added, “The Texas Bishops have long taught about the immorality of the death penalty and were particularly vocal seeking mercy for Panetti, who has been diagnosed by several doctors as suffering from severe mental illness.”
The stay, the bishops said, “means Panetti's attorneys will have another opportunity to argue that the death penalty in his case would violate the constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The Texas Catholic Conference will continue to advocate for the commutation of Panetti’s sentence into institutionalization.”
Panetti was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday evening, but the fifth circuit appeals court said it needed time “to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter.”
In September 1992, Panetti killed his in-laws Joe and Amanda Alvarado in their home in front of his estranged wife and their 3-year-old daughter. He was heavily armed and dressed in camouflage.
He had been hospitalized for mental illness more than a dozen times before the murders, and is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic.
During his 1995 trial, he acknowledged that he had killed the two. However, he acted as his own attorney and dressed as a cowboy, believing that only an insane person could make an insanity defense, the Associated Press reports. He also tried to subpoena John F. Kennedy and the Pope.
Kathryn Kase, one of Panetti’s lawyers, has said the inmate believes he is being punished as part of a satanic conspiracy to prevent him from preaching the Gospel on death row.
Prosecutors have said that Panetti is faking insanity. Court-appointed experts for the state have voiced suspicions that some of his behavior was contrived. An assistant district attorney for Gillespie County, which handled his trial, has said that the inmate’s discussion of politics during a Nov. 4 prison visit with relatives showed he was oriented in time and place.
However, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has unanimously recommended his sentence be commuted.
On Tuesday, the Texas Catholic Conference had written to state governor Rick Perry seeking a stay, citing Panetti's “lengthy history of mental illness, his delusional behavior while defending himself at trial in 1995, and the multiple diagnoses from mental health professionals confirming his severe mental illness,” as well as noting the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Christ “teaches that a true neighbor is one who shows mercy.”
“Showing mercy does not mean neglecting to administer justice or punish people for their crimes. Showing mercy does mean exhibiting compassion toward all of our brothers and sisters, and providing them with an opportunity for atonement and rehabilitation,” added the Catholic conference, which called for Panetti’s sentence to be commuted for him to obtain appropriate medical treatment for mental illness.
“While government has an obligation to protect the community from violent offenders, it also bears a responsibility to ensure justice and proper treatment for our brothers and sisters suffering from mental illness,” the conference said.
Opponents of the execution include his ex-wife, who signed a petition against the execution, and over 20 conservative leaders who opposed the execution in a joint letter.
The Texas Catholic Conference’s Texas Mercy Project has written a prayer asking for mercy for Panetti, and for mercy and compassion from those with authority over his execution.
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http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/12/04/fifth-circuit-stays-execution-of-schizophrenic-inmate.htm
Fifth Circuit Stays Execution of Schizophrenic Inmate
By ERIK DE LA GARZA, December 4, 2014
NEW ORLEANS (CN) - The 5th Circuit on Wednesday stayed the execution of a schizophrenic Texas inmate hours before the double-murderer was to die by lethal injection.
The execution of Scott Panetti, 56, sparked international criticism of the nation's most active death-penalty state plan to put a mentally ill man to death.
After the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Panetti's appeal last week, attorneys filed a flurry of last-minute appeals.
A broad coalition of mental health professionals, legal scholars, conservative groups and politicians asked officials to intervene. More than 97,000 people signed an online petition urging Texas Gov. Rick Perry for compassion.
On Wednesday a three-judge panel on the 5th Circuit granted Panetti's appeal, saying the court needs time to consider the "complex legal questions at issue in this matter."
Panetti's legal team said the ruling is the first step in a process that will demonstrate Panetti is "too severely mentally ill to be executed."
"Mr. Panetti's illness, schizophrenia, was present for years prior to the crime, profoundly affected his trial, and appears to have worsened in recent years," attorneys Greg Wiercioch of the University of Wisconsin Law School and Kathryn Kase of the Texas Defender Service said in a joint statement.
"When people who have severe mental illness enter our criminal justice system, the system has a moral obligation to respond appropriately to the limitations and deficits presented by mental illness," they said.
Panetti has not been evaluated for seven years. He has a fixed delusion that his execution "is being orchestrated by Satan, working through the State of Texas, to put an end to his preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ," his attorneys say in court documents.
Panetti was 34 in 1992 when he shaved his head and shot his in-laws to death in their Fredericksburg, Texas home. After the killings, he kidnapped his wife and daughter at gunpoint and held them hostage in a cabin before releasing them.
He was arrested that same day but told police "that it was his alter ego, 'Sarge' who did the killing," according to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice summary of the case.
Attorneys say the murders were a result of a "psychotic break" produced by the mental illness that Panetti has been battling since 1978.
Panetti was convicted of capital murder in 1995 but not before attempting to call more than 200 witnesses, including John F. Kennedy, the Pope, and Jesus Christ, in what his attorneys called "a bizarre circus that contravened justice."
Panetti has been down this road before. The Wisconsin native was one day away from execution in 2004 when a federal judge stayed the death sentence to evaluate whether Panetti had the competence to be executed. Despite finding Panetti was under the influence of severe mental illness at the time of the crimes, the court concluded he was competent for execution.
Panetti was scheduled to be eleventh and final Death Row inmate to be executed in Texas this year. The 10 Texas executions was the lowest number since 1996 when Texas executed just three people. It has scheduled 11 executions for the first five months of 2015.
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U.S. court suspends execution of schizophrenic inmate
December 3, 2014
Austin, Texas, Dec 3 (EFE).- A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday halted the controversial execution of schizophrenic prisoner Scott Panetti, which had been scheduled for this afternoon in Texas, ruling that there are "complex legal questions" in the case.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which has jurisdiction over Texas, decided to stay the execution to be able to examine in detail the complex legal questions surrounding the case.
Panetti, who according to medical reports suffers from schizophrenia, in 1992 killed his in-laws and kidnapped his wife and 3-year-old daughter in the Texas town of Fredericksburg. He was arrested a few hours later.
During his 1995 trial, he defended himself dressed as a cowboy and tried to call more than 200 witnesses, including former President John F. Kennedy, Pope John Paul II and Jesus Christ.
Since then, he has been hospitalized for psychosis and delusions on multiple occasions.
His attorneys, Greg Wiercioch and Kathryn Kase, while acknowledging their client's deeds, issued a statement in which they said the court ruling is the first step in a process that will clearly show that Panetti suffers from severe mental illness that makes him ineligible for the death penalty.
The case has attracted the attention of prominent figures and organizations, including the United Nations, which on Tuesday asked the United States to halt his execution.
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US Approves Lawyers’ Appeal, Suspends Execution of Schizophrenic Inmate
BY IANS, December 4, 2014
After the lawyers for Scott Panetti, an inmate suffering from schizophrenia who is to be executed, voted against delaying the execution by lethal injection and asked the US Supreme Court to reconsider his case, the execution at Huntsville prison has been suspended by US court just hours before he was to be put to death by lethal injection.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which has jurisdiction over Texas, decided Wednesday to suspend the execution to be able to examine in detail the complicated legal questions surrounding the case.
“We stay the execution, pending further order of the court to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter,” the ruling stated.
Panetti, who in 1992 killed his in-laws and kidnapped his wife and three-year-old daughter in Texas, seems to be running out of options to escape his date with the executioner.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has unanimously voted against delaying Panetti’s execution for 180 days on Monday and also denied a request by Texas Governor Rick Perry to commute the sentence to life in prison.
After the Texas parole board’s rejection, Panetti’s lawyers has filed a reprieve letter with Governor Perry asking him to issue a 30-day suspension and also asked the US Supreme Court to stop his execution on the grounds that he was severely mentally ill.
Their third recourse was the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals with jurisdiction over Texas where the lawyers have filed an appeal for a suspension until Panetti was subjected to an examination.
During his 1995 trial, Panetti defended himself dressed as a cowboy and tried to call more than 200 witnesses including former President John F. Kennedy, Pope John Paul II and Jesus Christ.
Moreover, he pinned the crimes on his alter ego “Sarge”. Since then he has been hospitalised for psychosis and delusions on multiple occasions. Several organisations, led by the American Psychiatric Association, as well as doctors, religious leaders and lawyers have requested clemency for the convict.
Even Panetti’s ex-wife, Sonja Alvarado said in 1999 in a sworn statement that he “suffers from a mental illness and should not be executed”.
Meanwhile, Panetti’s lawyers, Greg Wiercioch and Katheryn Kase, argued that their client had not gone through a competency evaluation in seven years and that he was too mentally ill to be executed.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals was one of the three options Panetti was left with in order to escape capital punishment. The other options were to move the Supreme Court or to appeal to Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is not known for granting clemency. (IANS)
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5th Circuit Court of Appeals Issues Stay Of Scott Panetti Execution
Death Penalty Gov. Rick Perry Richard Viguerie Ron Paul Scott Panetti
By CHQ Staff | 12/4/2014
In a two-sentence stay, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, one of two courts considering appeals from Scott Louis Panetti's defense team, put a temporary halt to Panetti’s scheduled execution.
"We STAY the execution pending further order of the court to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter," the appeals court order stated. "An order setting a briefing schedule and oral argument will follow."
Panetti has suffered from schizophrenia and other mental illnesses for over 30 years and has been hospitalized on 15 separate occasions.
Twenty-one conservative leaders have now joined with mental health and death penalty reformers in opposing the execution, asking Texas Governor Rick Perry in a recent letter to commute Panetti's sentence to life in prison, saying, "As conservatives, we must be on guard that such an extraordinary government sanction not be used against a person who is mentally incapable of rational thought." Signatories on the letter include ConservativeHQ.com Chairman Richard A. Viguerie, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, former New Mexico Attorney General Hal Stratton, conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III, former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, former Texas Gov. Mark White and former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul.
According to anti-death penalty advocate Laura Porter, the Court's stay is important because the Fifth Circuit has never before found someone to be too mentally ill to be executed. The stay does not permanently halt Panetti’s execution for the 1992 murders of his in-laws, Joe and Amanda Alvarado of Kerr County, Texas. Rather, it simply puts the execution on hold until such time as the court considers and disposes of “the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter.”
According to The Texas Tribune, only action from Perry or the courts can prevent the execution from moving forward. On Monday, Panetti's lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution, saying their client is not competent. Executing him, they argued, would violate his Eighth Amendment protection to be free of cruel and unusual punishment.
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Capital Punishment News Update 2014: What's Next for Mentally Ill Texas Man?
By Rodrigo Ugarte, December 3, 2014
An appeals court has stayed the execution of a mentally ill Texas man sentenced to death for the execution of his ex-wife's parents. The stay came hours before the man's scheduled execution later on Wednesday. Human rights groups, psychiatric groups and conservatives came together in opposition to the impending execution.
The 5th U.S. Court of Appeals granted Scott Panetti a reprieve just eight hours before his execution, according to USA Today. Panetti's lawyers had been arguing their client is too mentally impaired to be executed under the law. The court said on its ruling it needed more time to "allow us to fully consider the late-arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter."
Oral arguments will be scheduled and Texas's state attorney general said he would not fight the ruling. Many have called for Panetti's execution to be stayed because of his mental state, including the American Psychiatric Association.
"This has been a long saga," said Paul Appelbaum of the APA, who lobbied against the execution. "We're not at the end of the story yet."... His behavior, best we can tell, was driven by his illness rather than a deliberate act of criminal intent."
Amnesty International had also called for a stay of execution in late November, criticizing Texas's decision to continue the execution.
"It is never too late until the lethal injection is administered. The parole board can vote for commutation. The governor can stop the execution, even without a recommendation to do so from the board. To choose to kill Scott Panetti would put down another shameful marker in the ugly history of the death penalty in the USA," said Rob Freer, USA Researcher at Amnesty International.
Panetti's case also brought together various national conservatives, who wrote a letter to Republican Texas governor Rick Perry, reports the Houston Chronicle.
Panetti was convicted in 1995 to death for the murders of Joe and Amanda Alvarado. During his trial he defended himself, wearing a cowboy outfit. He called to the witness stand the pope, the late John F. Kennedy and Jesus.
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Scott Panetti Case: Evangelical Leader Writes Open Appeal to Gov. Rick Perry to Commute Death Sentence
By LEAH MARIEANN KLETT, Dec 03, 2014 02:36 PM
A leading Christian Evangelical who has prayed with and for Texas Gov. Rick Perry Governor has issued an have issued an open appeal to the Governor to mercifully commute the death sentence of Scott Panetti, a diagnosed schizophrenic, to life in prison.
The Reverend Dr. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, who prayed with and for Texas Governor Rick Perry last month, said, "In situations like this one, courts have no mechanism to administer mercy, they are all about the law. Mercy rests with the executive branch, so it is in the Governor's purview. If ever there was a time for mercy, it is in this case. A merciful commuting of the death sentence to life is the morally correct thing to do. The Governor should do everything in his power to commute Mr. Panetti's sentence, even if it is temporary. In my prayer for the Governor just weeks ago I spoke of those that act in truth even at great cost. This may cost the Governor something, but it would be well worth it because it's the good and right thing to do."
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Panetti, now 56, admitted in 1995 to having killed his in-laws three years earlier, forcing his wife and three-year-old daughter to watch. He has suffered from schizophrenia and other mental illnesses for over 30 years and has been hospitalized on 15 separate occasions. Despite his illness, Panetti was scheduled to be executed on Wednesday. However, an appeals court issued a stay Wednesday morning, meaning Panetti's lawyers will have another chance to argue that the death penalty is unconstitutional in their client's case.
According to The Atlantic, Panetti believed he was engaged in a battle with Satan and tried to exorcise his home by burying his furniture in the backyard. At his trial, he dressed as a cowboy and acted as his own attorney. He also attempted to subpoena John F. Kennedy and the Pope.
The pastor's appeal to Gov. Perry cites a "long history of Christian moral theology, philosophy, and instruction" that renders mentally unstable perpetrators "not morally culpable for his acts." Schenck clarifies that "while this does not lift the need to protect society from future acts of violence by such a person, it does preclude the ultimate punishment of death."
Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition and pastor of Church on the Hill in Washington, D.C., added that killing a mentally challenged inmate will diminish the public's faith in a moral justice system.
"We pray and appeal to Gov. Perry and the State of Texas to commute this execution of a person who has serious mental challenges," he said. " Justice will not be served in this case and it is simply barbaric to take the life of a person struggling with mental illness. We need to work for an America where the dignity and value of life is embraced and not diminished. Sadly in this case, that is not happening."
More than 93,000 people have signed an online petition asking Perry to grant Panetti clemency. He also has the support of his ex-wife and former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).
Heather Beaudoin, coordinator of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, has said that the Panetti case was "the largest outpouring of support on a death penalty case we've seen from evangelicals," and the first time she was aware of Paul personally speaking out against an execution.
If Texas carries out the execution, Panetti would be the 519th person to die by lethal injection in the state since 1982.
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http://www.thestarphoenix.com/health/Texas+puts+execution+mentally+trial/10439035/story.html
Texas puts execution of the mentally ill on trial
BY WILLIAM MARSDEN, POSTMEDIA NEWS DECEMBER 4, 2014 5:19 AM
One day in 1992, Scott Panetti dressed up in combat fatigues and, assuming the character of one of his hallucinations, Sgt. Ironhorse, went to his in-laws' home and shot them dead. He claimed they were the devil incarnate and he was doing God's work.
During the previous 11 years, Panetti had displayed all the hallmarks of a severely mentally ill person. He believed Satan had invaded his home and once buried his furniture in his backyard because he thought the devil was in the furniture.
He had been hospitalized 12 times for psychosis and delusional behaviour and was diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia, brain dysfunction, homicidal tendencies and depression. The U.S. government had ruled he was entitled to social security benefits because he was disabled by mental illness.
When he killed his fatherin-law and mother-in-law he had recently left hospital and had stopped taking his antipsychotic medication.
Nevertheless, he was deemed competent enough to stand trial and was allowed to represent himself. Dressed as a cowboy with a purple bandana, he called more than 200 witnesses including the pope, John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ. He even called his alter ego Sgt. Ironhorse to recount the crime. At one point, he extended his arm towards the jury as if it were a rifle and said, "boom, boom, blood, blood."
On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted seven to zero to deny commutation of the death sentence. Notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence of Panetti's severe mental illness, the prosecution argued he was faking it.
By commuting the sentence, the court "would undermine the sentences of a majority of the nation's death row inmates," the prosecution said, raising the possibility, perhaps inadvertently, that the U.S. regularly executed mentally ill people.
Panetti, 56, was scheduled to be killed by lethal injection on Wednesday at 6 p.m. CST.
But on Wednesday morning, a Texas appeals court stayed the execution until Panetti's lawyers had a final opportunity to plea for leniency.
His lawyers claim the death sentence violates the Eighth Amendment, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment.
"Mr. Panetti's execution would cross a moral line and serve no retributive or deterrent value," Panetti's lawyer Kathryn Kase said in a statement. "There is still time to stop this unconscionable execution of a severely mentally ill man who would die without comprehending what his death means."
This is the second time Panetti has won a stay of execution. Texas first tried to execute him in 2004, but was thwarted when a federal court ruled he was mentally ill and therefore not competent.
Not to be deterred, the state persuaded a circuit court judge in 2013 to reverse that decision. Panetti's execution was back on.
For many people and groups both for and against capital punishment, the case reflects the treatment of the mentally ill in the United States.
Groups and individuals from almost every spectrum of U.S. society - conservatives, liberals, Evangelicals, legal and medical groups - have pleaded with Texas to stop the execution.
Former Texas governor Mark White called Panetti's trial "a sham."
He added, "Executing Panetti would say far more about us than it would about
the man we are attempting to kill."
Many worried that Panetti's execution would set the stage for the execution of the mentally handicapped.
U.S. courts have ruled that people who are so insane they don't know the difference between right and wrong and therefore cannot understand either the meaning of their crime or their punishment cannot be executed.
The Supreme Court has outlawed the execution of the mentally handicapped.
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Schizophrenic spared the death penalty
December 4, 2014
A US federal appeals court has stayed the execution of a schizophrenic man just hours before he was scheduled to die in Huntsville, Texas by lethal injection.
Scott Panetti had been scheduled for execution on Thursday at the state penitentiary.
Panetti, who has suffered from the mental illness for three decades, received the death penalty for the 1992 shooting of his estranged wife's parents at point blank range.
The Fifth Circuit Court issued the decision, which cannot be appealed, in order 'to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter'.
Panetti's lawyers requested more time so that psychiatric evaluation could be conducted to determine their client's criminal liability, an evaluation that they said had not been carried out in seven years.
Panetti won support for his case from the likes of the Mental Health America advocacy organisation, psychiatrists, former judges, prosecutors and religious groups.
The case also garnered interest from the European Union, which urged Texas Governor Rick Perry to grant Panetti clemency.
'Mr Panetti's illness, schizophrenia, was present for years prior to the crime, profoundly affected his trial, and appears to have worsened in recent years,' his lawyers Greg Wiercioch and Kathryn Kase said in a statement.
Panetti portrayed his own lawyer during the trial, wore a cowboy outfit and tried to call the pope, John F. Kennedy and Jesus as witnesses, he was convicted in 1995.
Neither the Supreme Court nor Perry had yet weighed in on the appeal.
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Hayward man's execution stayed hours before planned injection
By Kristen Shil, December 3, 2014
Eau Claire (WQOW) - A former Hayward man convicted of killing his in-laws more than 20 years ago will not be executed today as originally planned.
Scott Panetti has been on death row in texas since 1992. Today, a federal appeals court stayed his execution. The court granted a reprieve this afternoon, hours before he was set to die by lethal injection. The court said it needed time to consider the late arriving and complex legal questions in the case.
Panetti's lawyers have argued he has suffered from schizophrenia for decades and is too mentally ill to be put to death.
Panetti represented himself at his trial dressed like a cowboy and called John F. Kennedy, the Pope and Jesus to the stand.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/ted-cruz-gets-it-right-again-on-scott-panetti-case/
Ted Cruz Gets It Right Again on Scott Panetti Case
by Daniel Greenfield, December 4, 2014
I have no idea why some conservatives have decided that they need to imitate liberals by standing up for criminals. Ted Cruz fortunately isn’t one of them.
Cruz refused to join the calls for clemency for Scott Panetti, who had murdered his in-laws and held his wife and daughter hostage, and instead said, “I trust the criminal justice system to operate, to protect the rights of the accused and to administer justice to violent criminals.”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me, as an elected official who does not currently have a role in the criminal justice system, to be getting involved in the adjudication of any particular case,” he said. “It’s important that the law be followed.”
That’s a radical departure from Obama in both principle and restraint. Cruz chose not to comment directly on the case beyond expressing his confidence in the Texas legal system.
Mainstream media outlets have called Scott Panetti’s trial an outrage and denounced the legal system. The trial was an outrage mainly because the murderer was allowed to put on a bizarre show of pretending to be insane in a way that the worst actor in the world would.
Editorials opposing his execution invariably highlight his bizarre courtroom behavior. Wearing a costume and speaking in gibberish is not proof of innocence. Neither is trying to subpoena unrelated famous people. It’s theater. It’s how someone pretending to be crazy would act.
Scott Panetti was found competent to stand trial repeatedly. His theatrics are just that… an act.
The murders that he carried out were conventional. His wife left him after he abused her and took the daughter. He dressed in fatigues, armed himself, killed his in-laws and abducted his wife and daughter.
Those aren’t the actions of the lunatic who is so incapable of processing reality that he doesn’t even know why he’s being executed, as his lawyers and defenders contend.
It was a conventional crime with an obvious motive.
Scott Panetti has been really good at working the system. The religious angle isn’t new. Plenty of criminals get religion in prison, but it paid off for him. Conservatives are being told to sympathize with him because he supposedly thinks he’s being executed for preaching.
But they’re not getting the whole story.
Panetti argued that he was not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutors maintained that Panetti was malingering — while they conceded to elements of mental illness, they weren’t buying his claim to legal insanity. The jury sided with the state. (An appellate judge later cited prison tape recordings of Panetti’s phone conversations with his parents in which he apparently seemed in full control of his faculties.)
“The tapes of Panetti’s conversations with his parents establish that Panetti has a fairly sophisticated understanding of his case, up to and including the legal intricacies presented by Ford and the Supreme Court’s remand opinion,” U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks wrote.
Panetti’s lawyers have argued in appeals that Panetti understands that, officially, he was sentenced to death for the murder of his in-laws, but that Panetti believes that’s a cover for the truth: that the state is merely a pawn of Satan, who wants Panetti killed so he can no longer preach the gospel.
Translation, the story about Panetti not knowing why he’s being executed has fallen apart. Panetti’s defenders still clinging to this to prove his mental illness can let go of it now.
Faking insanity is common for death row inmates. Either that or retardation. The reason is obvious. And yet 90 percent of the coverage simply repeats stories about wacky courtroom behavior as if they were evidence of anything except bad acting.
Jurors pay attention to expert testimony which is why he was on death row. The media just repeats stories about a guy dressing up in costume and acts outraged that he could even be tried when he’s “clearly” insane based on his wacky costume.
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