Scott Panetti Case Roundup: San Antonio Express-News, Amarillo Globe-News, and more
Stefanie Faucher
San Antonio Express-News - Editorial: 5th Circuit right about Panetti case
Amarillo Globe-News - Editorial: Don’t be cruel — and unusual
Miami Herald - Pitts: The case of Scott Panetti — and the true meaning of 'cruel and unusual'
Houston Chronicle - Casey: Who's the insane one, Panetti or the Texas judicial system?
Noozhawk (Santa Barbara, CA) - Alcorn: Crazy Justice, and Murder, Mayhem and the Death Penalty
Huffington Post - Francolini: Our Collective Soul
Los Angeles Times (mention) - Martelle: The most poignant condemnations of the death penalty
MSNBC - The Rachel Maddow Show - Execution stayed for mentally ill Texas prisoner
Psychology Today - Execution Stayed in Texas for Mentally Ill Man
Inqusitir - Confessed Killer Scott Panetti Gets Stay Of Execution, Drawing Cheers And Outrage
Daily Mail - Family of victims murdered by delusional death row inmate Scott Panetti say they are 'devastated' his execution was stopped and claim he is not as 'crazy' as people believe
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5th Circuit right about Panetti case
Express-News Editorial Board, December 7, 2014
There would have been no justice in killing Scott Panetti. There would have been no deterrence of other, future crimes. No insights into his mind and no last-minute penance.
With so many complex questions surrounding his mental illness and his detachment from reality, an execution would have been nothing more than mindless vengeance, setting a dangerous precedent for the mentally ill accused of serious crimes.
The United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans was right, then, to stay Panetti’s execution, “to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter,” the court wrote in its order, all of two sentences long.
Panetti, 56, was diagnosed with schizophrenia long before the 1992 murders of his wife’s parents in Fredericksburg with a deer rifle. He was hospitalized 13 times between 1978 and 1991. As early as 1986, he began experiencing paranoid delusions about Satan, once even burying furniture in his backyard. In the early 1990s, failing to take anti-psychotic medications, his condition deteriorated. He would shift into alter egos, including the violent and angry “Sarge Ranahan.”
He inexplicably was allowed to represent himself at his trial, attempting to call 200 subpoenas, including the pope, John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ. He wore a cowboy costume and a purple bandana. When he recounted the details of the slayings, he assumed his alter ego, “Sarge,” telling the brutal details in third-person.
For years, his case has worked its way through the courts. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed his then-planned execution, saying his competency had not been adequately determined. He was examined the next year by five experts, with three finding he was not competent. But a judge sided with the other two experts.
Clearly, competency needs to be determined. If, in fact, Panetti’s mental illness keeps him from understanding his crimes, and why he is being punished for them, then he should not be executed.
Under the Eighth Amendment, it would be cruel and unusual punishment.
Staying the execution until Panetti’s competency can be determined is the right, humane and just action. Killing him, with so many outstanding legal and moral questions, would have been an indictment of our justice system and a disregard for our greater humanity.
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http://amarillo.com/opinion/editorial/2014-12-07/editorial-monday-briefing-dec-8-2014
Don’t be cruel — and unusual
December 7, 2014
The syndicated column by Leonard Pitts Jr. regarding capital punishment on today’s editorial page is interesting, but raises a couple of serious questions.
If convicted murderer and Texas death row inmate Scott Panetti is mentally ill and has been suffering from schizophrenia (among other alleged illnesses) for decades — and has been hospitalized more than a dozen times — why was he on the streets?
Did mental health professionals drop the ball? Should someone have seen that Panetti was a danger to others?
Speaking of mental illness, even someone with a mental illness is able to determine right from wrong — sometimes.
Tragically, there are numerous cases of individuals who commit heinous and horrible crimes — insane crimes. Not that this applies in Panetti’s case, but when these same individuals attempt to conceal and hide their crimes and elude law enforcement or capture, it is apparent they are aware of the difference between right and wrong.
When it comes to the death penalty, the determination of “cruel and unusual” needs to be determined based on several factors — and many questions need to asked and answered.
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The case of Scott Panetti — and the true meaning of 'cruel and unusual'
As flawed and broken as our system of death is, we continue to embrace the puritanical morality of eye for eye and blood for blood.
By Leonard Pitts, December 7, 2014
So what does "cruel and unusual" mean?
I once asked that of a law professor. The Eighth Amendment prohibits "cruel and unusual" punishment, but I figured there had to be some technical definition I, as a layperson, was missing. I mean, from where I sit, it's pretty "cruel and unusual" to execute someone, but to judge from the 1,392 executions of the last 38 years, that isn't the case.
Scott Panetti almost became number 1,393 last week, but within hours of his scheduled lethal injection, he was reprieved by a federal judge. The court said it needs more time to consider the issues his case raises.
In a rational place, it would not be news that Panetti was not killed. In a rational place, they would understand that state-sanctioned execution is a relic of frontier barbarism that leaves us all wet with the blood of the damned. In a rational place, they would say there's something especially repugnant about applying that grisly sanction to the mentally ill, like Panetti.
But Panetti doesn't live in a rational place. He lives in America. Worse, he lives in Texas.
They love their executions in Rick Perry's kingdom. Since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, an advocacy group, that state has killed almost 520 people. That's nearly five times more than the next bloodiest state, Oklahoma, with 111.
There is no question Panetti deserves punishment. In 1992, he shot his estranged wife's parents to death as she and the couple's daughter looked on. He held them both hostage before releasing them unharmed.
But there is also no question that Panetti, 56, suffers from severe mental illness. At his trial, in which he was somehow, bizarrely, allowed to represent himself, he wore a purple cowboy suit with a 10-gallon hat and summoned a personality he called "Sarge" to explain what happened on the fateful day. His witness list included 200 people. Among them: John F. Kennedy, the pope, Anne Bancroft and Jesus Christ.
The state contends that Panetti, who was off his meds at the time of the killing, is faking it. During a 2004 hearing, the county sheriff called him "the best actor there is." In its most recent filings, Texas accuses him of "grossly exaggerating" his symptoms.
If it's an act, it's been going on a long time. His attorneys say Panetti was diagnosed with schizophrenia 14 years before the shootings and was hospitalized 13 times between 1978 and 1991. Now a court decides on his life or death.
It's a pregnant decision in a country where, apparently, it isn't "cruel and unusual" to preside, as Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton did, over the execution of a man so profoundly impaired that he saved the pie from his last meal to eat later. Or to let a man gasp and snort for almost two hours as a lethal injection very slowly killed him, as happened in Arizona. Or to set a man on fire, as has happened at least twice in Florida's electric chair. Or to execute people for crimes committed when they were children. Or to send innocent people to death row. Or to choose whom to execute based on color of killer, color of victim, gender, geography and class.
So what, exactly, might be too cruel and unusual for us to allow? The professor could not answer. Which, of course, is an answer.
As flawed and broken as our system of death is, we continue to embrace the puritanical morality of eye for eye and blood for blood. Most of the western world has left this savagery behind, but we insist on it, leaving us isolated from our national peers, those nations whose values are most like ours, but looming large among the outlaw likes of Somalia and Iran.
Now we are debating whether to kill a man so addled he tried to subpoena Jesus. And that leads to a conclusion as painful as it is unavoidable:
What's "cruel and unusual," is us.
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Casey: Who's the insane one, Panetti or the Texas judicial system?
Rick Casey says that schizophrenic killer Scott Panetti, like Andrea Yates, is certifiably insane, so why is he being executed by the state?
By Rick Casey | December 6, 2014
Hours before Scott Panetti was scheduled to be executed last week, a federal appeals court in New Orleans halted the proceedings to take up the issue of whether he is mentally competent enough to be killed.
The evidence is, however, that it is the state of Texas that should be subjected to a mental competency test.
Panetti was convicted of killing his wife's parents in Fredricksburg in 1992 in front of his wife and their 3-year-old child. In the previous 14 years he had been hospitalized more than a dozen times for schizophrenia.
His wife had him committed to a mental hospital after he buried their furniture in the backyard because the devil inhabited it. He also tried to keep the devil out of their house by nailing the curtains shut.
His well-documented paranoia apparently caused him to fire his defense attorneys, and a Gillespie County judge allowed him to defend himself - even after he pursued an insanity defense not by calling mental health experts but by subpoenaing John Kennedy, the Pope and Jesus.
After he was convicted of killing her parents, his wife filed an affidavit saying he should not be executed because he was insane.
Everybody agrees Panetti is insane. But what about the Texas judicial system?
I first became concerned about the state of Texas's state of mind a decade ago while covering the Andrea Yates case. You may recall her as the Clear Lake mother with a long history of severe mental illness who drowned her five children. She wanted to send them to heaven because Satan persuaded her that she was a terrible mother whose kids would eventually slip into his grasp and burn in hell for eternity.
The county jail psychiatrist who treated her after the killings testified Yates thought, in her psychotic state, that it was the right thing to do. Three of four other psychiatrists and one psychologist who interviewed her agreed.
But prosecutors presented a hired-gun psychiatrist (at $105,000) who testified that the fact that Yates called police after completing the killings showed she knew what she had done was wrong. In addition, he testified, it was illogical for Yates to be killing her children at Satan's urging in order to send them to heaven.
That's right: A psychiatrist based an analysis of guilt on the fact that a deranged woman was irrational in accepting the argument of Satan speaking in her head.
It worked. The jury convicted Yates.
This same psychiatrist, Dr. Park Dietz, was later hired by Tyler prosecutors in the case of Deanna Laney, who killed two of her children and tried to kill a third by bashing their heads in with rocks.
Dietz determined that she was not guilty - and a jury agreed - because she believed the voice in her head telling her to kill her babies was that of God.
In Texas your guilt or innocence can depend on whose voices your diseased mind conjures up for you.
But there was another twist. Psychiatrist Dietz turned out to be delusional himself. He testified that shortly before the killings, Yates likely saw an episode of "Law and Order" that featured a woman who concocted a story of postpartum depression to beat the rap for cold bloodedly killing her children. It turned out that episode didn't exist, and Yates' conviction was overturned.
Prosecutors not only brought back Dietz for a second trial four years later, but added a second psychiatrist - at the insane cost of $243,000 - who was even less credible. Offering evidence that the public is progressing, if not prosecutors, the second jury acquitted Yates.
A recent outpouring of protest against Panetti's execution - including from conservative quarters - and the fact that Texas's Court of Criminal Appeals last week denied defense motions to halt the execution by bare majorities of 5-4 and 6-3, indicate that even Texas may be teetering on the verge of sanity.
Casey, a former Houston Chronicle columnist, is a regular contributor to these pages. This column first appeared as part of "Texas Week with Rick Casey" on KLRN's, the PBS television station in San Antonio.
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http://www.noozhawk.com/article/randy_alcorn_justice_murder_mayhem_death_penalty_20141207
Randy Alcorn: Crazy Justice, and Murder, Mayhem and the Death Penalty
By Randy Alcorn, Noozhawk Columnist | Published on 12.07.2014
A federal appeals court has halted Texas’ execution of convicted killer Scott Panetti, who, while allegedly suffering from religious delusions, murdered his wife’s parents.
The appeals court considered Panetti’s history of mental illness in ruling that he may be exempt from execution. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled nearly 30 years ago that mentally incompetent persons could not be executed as that would be cruel and unusual punishment prohibited under the Eighth Amendment.
Justice can have some very fine lines, and determining mental fitness for execution is certainly one of them. In addition to insanity, courts have ruled that convicted murderers can be too young, or have too low an IQ to receive the death penalty. This leads to some interesting questions about rehabilitation, guilt and innocence, and public safety.
A person can commit horrific crimes, claim innocence due to insanity, and eventually rejoin society as a free person.
Last month, convicted murderer Theodore LeLeaux, who, in 1984 murdered a coworker, cut out his heart and put it in his jacket, was paroled in San Luis Obispo County by a judge who decided he was rehabilitated. LeLeaux had claimed he suffered a psychotic delusion when he committed the savage murder. But he is all right now? Really? If Charles Manson is all right now should he be released into society?
It can all be a bit ironic. If Panetti is too crazy to execute, then maybe his murder conviction should be overturned. Then, he could be retried, found innocent by reason of insanity, and afterward if he could convince some judge that he was no longer insane he could be a free man. So, one can be crazy enough to commit murder, but too crazy to be fully punished for it.
How can it be accurately determined who is or is no longer a psychotic killer? And what is insanity anyway? Panetti’s defense is that he suffered from psychotic religious delusions; you know, the devil made him do it.
It can be argued that all religious beliefs are delusions; therefore any religious person committing a crime could be innocent by reason of insanity. So, all those Islamic State barbarians butchering people in the name of god could be innocent. They simply suffer from religious delusions.
It challenges both the notions of logic and justice that some people committing murder are evil and deserve punishment, including the death penalty, while others are mentally ill and deserve rehabilitating therapy. If the latter are innocent and not evil, then there is no guilty party; the murder victims are simply victims of an unfortunate accident. That can be difficult for the victims’ loved ones to accept. Somehow a tree falling on daddy is not the same as some lunatic cutting out daddy’s heart.
While some murders are committed out of mercy, as when someone kills a loved one who is suffering a painful terminal illness and wants to die, most murders are either cold-blooded or acts of rage. Why are they not acts of insanity? What is sane about cold-blooded or enraged murder? All such murderers are crazy, so why is it OK to execute any of them and not all of them?
However, who is nuts and who is not isn’t the most critical issue in deciding justice for murder, the death penalty itself is. While the courts are deliberating over whether a murderer is sane or not, or who is too young or not smart enough to execute, or what method of execution is constitutional, the larger problem is the many instances of failed justice that result in wrongful convictions. Time and time again innocent people have been sent to death row.
Unless justice can be absolutely infallible, all cops and prosecutors honest, and all juries impartial, the death penalty is not appropriate. With police around the country executing people on the streets with impunity, and with the federal government using drones to assassinate, without due process of law, U.S. citizens, we sure don’t need more state-sanctioned executions by a fallible, sometimes corrupt, judicial system.
The widespread police thuggery, the emerging police state that spies on and bullies the public, the twisted justice that punishes victimless drug users while it ignores fraudulent bankers who victimize millions of people has made American justice suspect. Public trust in the judicial system is in jeopardy.
Justice in America is the best money can buy, and for that reason and others it is not always impartial, honest or fair. It is certainly not infallible. Allowing such a system to put people to death is not only barbaric; it is a lethal threat to every citizen.
— Randy Alcorn is a Santa Barbara political observer. Contact him at randy...@cox.net, or click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janine-francolini/our-collective-soul_b_6270444.html
Our Collective Soul
By Janine Francolini, December 5, 2014
Scott Panetti, a 56 year old man in Texas was scheduled to be executed the other night for murdering his in-laws in 1992. What is important to note about this case is that in 1978, he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia, a very serious brain disorder. With bi-partisan support and much public outcry, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals halted the execution just hours before Mr. Panetti was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection.
In the stay of execution, the Circuit Court wrote, "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." Yes, there is complexity to this case but there are also facts that make this decision simple and easy to understand.....
Mr. Panetti showed signs of a mental disorder as a teenager and his first diagnosis was in 1978 while he was in the US Navy. In 1990, he was committed to a psychiatric hospital for the second time and has been hospitalized for his medical condition more than a dozen times.
At the time of the murder of his in-laws, he had gone off of his medication, was hearing voices and experiencing delusions and put on a business suit before surrendering to the police.
Mr. Panetti has represented himself in court, sometimes wearing a cowboy costume and a purple bandana. He rejected a plea offer that would change his sentence to life imprisonment, mounting an insanity defense. But instead of calling witnesses to attest to his mental health, he tried to subpoena John F. Kennedy, Pope John Paul II, Jesus Christ and 200 others. He was incoherent during the trial and fell asleep.
His attorneys appealed before the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, requesting funding for a mental health expert to evaluate his competency, something that hasn't been done since 2007. His lawyers also appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, requesting the stay based on the 8th Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment because, as argued by his attorneys, Panetti still hears voices and suffers from delusions which prevent him from understanding why he is being executed.
We also know that Mr. Panetti is a son, a father and a brother. One of the brightest lights in the dark vigil over the past week has been Mr. Panetti's sister's loving plea for her brother's life in the petition that she initiated that was signed by 97,287 supporters. The petition began with this poignant statement from his sister, "Scott Panetti is a paranoid schizophrenic who wore a TV-western cowboy costume in court and was allowed to represent himself while on trial for his life. But I know him as my big brother, the strong and handsome sailor, who came home to visit when on leave from the Navy."
And most importantly, we know that judgement is a slippery slope and that love and forgiveness are always the safer choices. Questions of justice and civil rights are looming large on many fronts in our country right now, so let's celebrate the light that our federal court system has shown in this moment for a thoughtful review of a decision about Scott Panetti and his medical condition. Because at issue is not only his life or death, but our nation's collective soul.
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http://www.latimes.com/local/la-ol-death-penalty-20141125-story.html#page=1
The most poignant condemnations of the death penalty
By Scott Martelle, December 6, 2014
r opponents of the death penalty, this has been something of a heartening year. The country is on a pace for its fewest executions since 1994, and although public support for the death penalty remains at a stubborn majority, high-profile exonerations and botched executions have led to new calls for its abolition. And with states finding it increasingly difficult to procure the drugs needed for executions, states are carrying out fewer executions — with the exception of Missouri.
There also have been some notable legal opinions and public comments that emanated from various appeals and challenges to the system. Here are a few that were especially poignant in condemning the nation’s acceptance of vengeance for justice, and of embracing a legal process too easily gamed by prosecutors to be reliable. In fact, one notable study this year found that at least 4% of those on death rows around the country are likely innocent of the crimes for which they could die.
Some quotes and observations fromt he past year:
"For all practical purposes then, a sentence of death in California is a sentence of life imprisonment with the remote possibility of death — a sentence no rational legislature or jury could ever impose.
"Of course, for an arbitrarily selected few of the 748 inmates currently on Death Row, that remote possibility may well be realized. Yet their selection for execution will not depend on whether their crime was one of passion or of premeditation, on whether they killed one person or ten, or on any other proxy for the relative penological value that will be achieved by executing that inmate over any other. Nor will it even depend on the perhaps neutral criterion of executing inmates in the order in which they arrived on Death Row. Rather, it will depend upon a factor largely outside an inmate’s control, and wholly divorced from the penological purposes the State sought to achieve by sentencing him to death in the first instance: how quickly the inmate proceeds through the state’s dysfunctional post-conviction review process."
—U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney, in a July 16 ruling that found California’s death penalty system to be unconstitutional (the state is appealing)
"The overwhelming majority of those facing execution today have what the court termed in Hall to be diminished culpability. Severe functional deficits are the rule, not the exception, among the individuals who populate the nation’s death rows. A new study by Robert J. Smith, Sophie Cull and Zoë Robinson, published in Hastings Law Journal, of the social histories of 100 people executed during 2012 and 2013 showed that the vast majority of executed offenders suffered from one or more significant cognitive and behavioral deficits….
"As the execution of Elroy Chester, John Ferguson, Daniel Cook and many more like them illustrates, barring the death penalty for intellectually disabled and juvenile offenders did not solve the death penalty’s dignity problem. Rather, those cases gave us cause to look more closely at the people whom we execute. And when you look closely, what you find is that the practice of the death penalty and the commitment to human dignity are not compatible."
--Charles J. Ogletree Jr., Harvard Law School professor
"Then at 2:05, Wood's mouth opened. Three minutes later it opened again, and his chest moved as if he had burped. Then two minutes again, and again, the mouth open wider and wider. Then it didn't stop.
"He gulped like a fish on land. The movement was like a piston: The mouth opened, the chest rose, the stomach convulsed. And when the doctor came in to check on his consciousness and turned on the microphone to announce that Wood was still sedated, we could hear the sound he was making: a snoring, sucking, similar to when a swimming-pool filter starts taking in air, a louder noise than I can imitate, though I have tried.
"It was death by apnea. And it went on for an hour and a half. I made a pencil stroke on a pad of paper, each time his mouth opened, and ticked off more than 640, which was not all of them, because the doctor came in at least four times and blocked my view.
"I turned to my friend Troy Hayden, the anchor and reporter from Fox 10 News, who was sitting next to me. Troy and I witnessed another execution together in 2007, and he had seen one before that, so he also knows what it looks like.
"'I don't think he's going to die,' I said."
—Michael Kiefer, Arizona Republic reporter who witnessed the botched, nearly two-hour execution of Joseph Woods
"When you’re talking about the ultimate penalty, when you’re talking about the state taking someone’s life, there has to be a great deal of flexibility within the system to deal with things like deadlines. There is always a need for finality in the system, that is a good thing. But there has to be enough flexibility so that you can look at the substance of a claim, especially when the death penalty is at stake. If you rely on process to deny what could be a substantive claim, I worry about where that will lead us.
"I disagree very much with Justice Scalia’s certitude that we have never put to death an innocent person. It’s one of the reasons why I personally am opposed to the death penalty. We have the greatest judicial system in the world, but at the end of the day it’s made up of men and women making decisions, tough decisions. Men and women who are dedicated, but dedicated men and women can make mistakes. And I find it hard to believe that in our history that has not happened.”
—Eric H. Holder Jr., U.S. attorney general
"It’s terrifying that our justice system allowed two intellectually disabled children to go to prison for a crime they had nothing to do with, and then to suffer there for 30 years. Henry watched dozens of people be hauled away for execution. It’s impossible to put into words what these men have been through and how much they have lost.”
—Ken Rose, lawyer for half-brothers Henry McCollum and Leon Brown of North Carolina, who were released after more than 30 years in prison for a murder they did not commit.
"I just thank God that I’m out of this place. I knew one day that I was going to be blessed to get out of prison, I just didn’t know when that time was going to be….They took 30 years away from me for no reason, but I don’t hate them. I don’t hate them one bit.”
—Henry McCollum upon leaving prison
"Florida seeks to execute a man because he scored a 71 instead of 70 on an IQ test. Florida is one of just a few States to have this rigid rule. Florida’s rule misconstrues the Court’s in Atkins that intellectually disability is characterized by an IQ of 'approximately 70.' Florida’s rule is in direct opposition to the views of those who design, administer, and interpret the IQ test. By failing to take into account the standard error of measurement, Florida’s law not only contradicts the test’s own design but also bars an essential part of a sentencing court’s inquiry into adaptive functioning. Freddie Lee Hall may or may not be intellectually disabled, but the law requires that he have the opportunity to present evidence of his intellectual disability, including deficits in adaptive functioning over his lifetime.
"The death penalty is the gravest sentence our society may impose. Persons facing that most severe sanction must have a fair opportunity to show that the Constitution prohibits their execution. Florida’s law contravenes our Nation’s commitment to dignity and its duty to teach human decency as the mark of a civilized world. The States are laboratories for experimentation, but those experiments may not deny the basic dignity the Constitution protects."
—Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in Hall vs. Florida
"To this day, Mr. Panetti hears voices and experiences delusions. Chief among his delusions is the belief that the State of Texas seeks to kill him to prevent him from preaching the Gospel to his fellow inmates on Texas death row and from exposing rampant corruption at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He cannot rationally understand that he is being executed for the murder of his wife’s parents. …
"Seven years have now elapsed since mental health experts last evaluated Mr. Panetti. During that time, no cure has been discovered for schizophrenia, and Mr. Panetti’s mental condition continues to decline. Texas’ rush to execute Mr. Panetti is unseemly. Undersigned counsel, who have represented Mr. Panetti for nearly a decade, became aware of Mr. Panetti’s current execution date only after a newspaper article appeared in the Houston Chronicle on October 30, 2014. Only then did counsel discover that the State had issued the Execution Warrant two weeks earlier, on October 16, 2014. The State’s failure to provide counsel with any notice in a case of this magnitude, where compelling questions of sanity and competency remain at issue, is unconscionable.”
—Kathryn M. Kade and Gregory W. Wiercioch, Scott Panetti’s attorneys, in a filing seeking clemency before his scheduled Dec. 3 execution in Texas. A federal appeals court has stayed the execution.
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http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
Execution stayed for mentally ill Texas prisoner
December 5, 2014
Rachel Maddow follows up previous reporting on the pending execution of Texas death row prisoner of questionable mental health, Scott Panetti, with the execution now stayed by a federal court so his case may be more closely considered.
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Execution Stayed in Texas for Mentally Ill Man
Is it constitutional to execute a psychotic death row inmate?
By Helen M. Farrell, December 5, 2014
The execution of an incompetent person has no deterrent effect on society and is simply a miserable spectacle.
This is one of many rationales behind the Federal Court of Appeals decision to order a stay of execution for Scott Panetti on Dec. 3, 2014. The order came within 12 hours of the death row inmate’s scheduled lethal injection in Texas.
Scott Panetti was a Navy veteran who received honorable discharge in the late 1970s. Around the same time he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent decades in-and-out of psychiatric facilities for the treatment of psychosis. In 1992, he Panetti reportedly shaved his head, dressed in military fatigues, armed himself with multiple guns and shot his in-laws at close range in front of his then-wife and daughter.
On trial for double homicide, Panetti chose to represent himself and plead not guilty. He showed up to court wearing a purple cowboy costume and tried to call hundreds of witnesses including the Pope, John F. Kennedy, and Jesus Christ. During the court proceedings he was allegedly confused, disorganized, and even fell asleep. Panetti was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Allegedly showing ongoing psychotic symptoms on death row, attorneys urged federal courts, including the Supreme Court, to intervene.
With the successful stay of execution, Panetti’s lawyers have an opportunity to argue that executing a mentally ill person is unconstitutional. And they will no doubt largely base their argument on the landmark court case of Ford v. Wainwright.
In this 1986 United States Supreme Court case, Alvin Ford was convicted of murder in Florida and was sentenced to die. His lawyers argued that he showed signs of psychosis and the United States Supreme Court agreed that the Eighth Amendment barred the execution of an insane person. Justice Powell suggested that there be a competency standard for execution with two prongs. Frist, the convicted must be aware of that an execution is happening. And secondly, they must know the reason they are being sentenced to death.
While Scott Panetti is reportedly aware that he has been sentenced to death for killing his in-laws, there are also reports that he believes his actions were part of spiritual warfare. His lawyers, therefore, contend that while he knows the facts, he does not have a rational understanding of them.
Competency to be executed standards has both judicial and moral significance. An incompetent person cannot give their attorney last minute information that might help with exoneration. Not to mention the fact that many people believe “madness” or insanity is punishment in and of itself and certainly an incompetent person would not be able to make peace with their God before death. It is estimated that between 10 percent and 15 percent of people on death row have some form of a mental illness.
Since retribution can’t be exacted from an incompetent person, the stay of execution for Panetti is a notable decision that will help set precedent for execution competency standards for the mentally ill.
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Confessed Killer Scott Panetti Gets Stay Of Execution, Drawing Cheers And Outrage
December 7, 2014
Confessed killer Scott Panetti has been granted a stay of execution in Texas after a judge decided more mental evaluations were necessary for the diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic.
The Inquisitr first brought you this story last week as Panetti was running out of time. In that previous post, it was revealed that Panetti murdered his in-laws, Joe and Amanda Alvarado, in 1992.
He was sentenced to die in 1995 after a disastrous defense in which he represented himself, dressed as a cowboy, believing that only the insane could pull off an insanity defense.
The crime, described in vivid detail by the Christian Science Monitor, noted that Panetti, “heavily armed, head shaved and wearing camouflage — shot and killed his in-laws at their Texas Hill Country home, showering his estranged wife and 3-year-old daughter in blood.”
Still, the crime’s horrific nature, Panetti’s defense claimed, did not tell the whole story.
Scott Panetti, prior to the murders, had been placed in a hospital close to a dozen times in the years leading up to the crime. An earlier Supreme Court review of the case (in 2007) tweaked criteria for executing the severely mentally disturbed by requiring inmates to know that they are being punished, and to have a “rational understanding” of said punishment.
The defense wanted more time for mental evaluation for Panetti, while the prosecutors claimed he had plenty of time for that in the years leading up to his planned execution.
The defense won, and now anti-death penalty supporters are cheering while the victims’ families are outraged.
First, Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald wrote this simultaneously relieved and critical op-ed, stating that it was “cruel and unusual” to execute any man, especially one with the severe disorder that Panetti has.
Pitts does think that Panetti deserves punishment, but not death. The family members, on the other hand, see the court’s decision to stay the man’s execution as a slight of justice and a continuance of their agony that they have been living with since 1992.
In the Daily Mail, they expressed this outrage.
Minnie Ybarbo, the daughter of the murder victims, said she and her son, Junior Herrera, were hoping for “some kind of closure,” and claim the murderer is “not as crazy as people believe.”
Of getting the call that Scott Panetti would not be executed, the family had this to say.
“It was very devastating because I guess I was looking forward to just having some type of closure,” Ybarbo said.
“It (execution) should have happened long ago,” said Herrera. “Years ago, and to me he’s just finding a way to use the system to his advantage.”
The family is still holding out hope that Scott Panetti will be executed, though they have no guess as to when that will be.
Do you side with the family or the anti-death penalty advocates on this?
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Family of victims murdered by delusional death row inmate Scott Panetti say they are 'devastated' his execution was stopped and claim he is not as 'crazy' as people believe
Minnie Ybarabo's parents Joe and Amanda Alvarado were killed by Panetti
She says that the stayed execution would have brought 'closure'
Her son Junior Herrera believes Panetti is not as 'insane' as people think
The diagnosed schizophrenic has been on death row for 19 years
He was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas halted the procedure
Claimed they need to consider 'late-arriving and complex legal questions'
Panetti wore a purple cowboy outfit while representing himself at his trial
By WILLS ROBINSON FOR MAILONLINE, 5 December 2014
The family of a married couple murdered by the delusional death row inmate Scott Panetti say they are 'devastated' his execution has been stayed.
Minnie Ybarbo, the daughter of Joe and Amanda Alvarado who were gunned down by the 56-year-old schizophrenic in 1992, says she and her son Junior Herrera, were hoping for 'some kind of closure' and claim the murderer is not as 'crazy' as people believe.
They were on their way to Huntsville in Texas on Wednesday to witness Panetti's execution, 19 years after he was put on death row.
But around 100 miles before they reached the prison and with just hours to spare, representatives from the attorney general's office told them it would not be going ahead.
The family claimed that the execution should have happened long ago. The average stay for an inmate on Texas death row is 11 years before he is killed.
The condemned killer was due to be put to death at 6pm (CST) on Wedneday. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia some 14 years before shooting dead his estranged wife Sonja Alvarado's parents in front of her and their three-year-old daughter in Fredericksburg, Texas, in 1992.
At his 1995 capital murder trial, Panetti acted as his own attorney, testified as alternate personality 'Sarge' to describe the Alvarado slayings and tried to subpoena Jesus Christ, the pope and the late President John F. Kennedy.
Panetti wore a purple cowboy outfit, including a big cowboy hat, and largely ignored a standby attorney the judge appointed to assist him.
The judgement from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas ordered that the execution be halted 'to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions'.
Describing harrowing accounts of the slayings, Mrs Ybarbo told KENS 5: 'My sister said that my mom just looked in his eyes and looked at Scott, and she knew she was going to be next, and he shot her too.
'It was very devastating because I guess I was looking forward to just having some type of closure.'
Mr Herrera, the victim's grandson, said: 'It (execution) should have happened long ago. Years ago, and to me he's just finding a way to use the system to his advantage.
'He's not as crazy as they think he is. He's not as insane as they say he is.'
Even though Panetti's death was postponed, the pair believed he will still be executed, it is just a matter of when.
State attorneys contended Panetti's condition 'has not markedly changed' and he should not be given a reprieve from lethal injection.
No court has ruled Panetti mentally incompetent or insane.
He had been hospitalized more than a dozen times for treatment in the decade before fatally shooting Joe and Amanda Alvarado at their home in the Texas Hill Country in 1992.
Their daughter Sonja, who was married to Panetti, and her three-year-old daughter, Amanda Lea, had moved in with them and she obtained a court order to keep Panetti away.
Ms Alvarado filed for divorce because of her husband's drinking and she said he was obsessed with the notion that the devil lived in their house.
He buried furniture and nailed the curtains shut. Panetti was also having hallucinations that the devil lived in the walls of the house and began washing the walls, believing that they were running with blood.
On the morning of September 8, 1992, Panetti armed himself with a rifle, a sawed-off shotgun and knives, dressed in camouflage clothing and broke into his estranged wife's parents' home in Fredericksburg, about 60 miles north of San Antonio.
Both Joe and Amanda Alvarado were shot at close range in front of his wife and daughter, before Panetti allowed them to leave. He later changed into a suit and handed himself into the police.
In a sworn affidavit in 1999, Ms Alvarado said that although she hated what her ex-husband did, he was a good man who suffered mental illness and should not be put to death.
In 1986, the high court ruled states may not execute killers whose insanity means they can't understand why they're being put to death.
In 2002, the justices prohibited the execution of the mentally impaired.
Five years later, ruling on an appeal from Panetti, the court said mentally ill condemned prisoners could be put to death if they have a factual and rational understanding of why they're being punished.
Panetti has insisted Satan is working through Texas prison officials to execute him to keep him from preaching the Gospel.
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