News & Opinion: Andre Thomas too mentally ill to be transported to his competency to be executed hearing
Regan Bowlby
News and Opinion: Dr. says Andre Thomas too mentally ill to be transported to his competency to be executed hearing
The Hill (Opinion): Not even Texas should want to execute this death row inmate
Davis Vanguard: Doctor Says Andre Thomas Too Mentally Ill to Be Transported for Competency-to-Execution Hearing
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/5771966-texas-andre-thomas-execution/
Not even Texas should want to execute this death row inmate
Austin Sarat, March 6, 2026
Texas was scheduled to hold a hearing today to determine whether Andre Thomas is competent to be executed. But that hearing had to be called off, because the expert retained by the state to examine him was not able to do so. That is because Thomas is too mentally ill to be brought safely from the prison to the courthouse.
He may be too mentally ill to be transported from any one place to another. In spite of that, Texas still wants to execute him.
In a letter filed with the court, Dr. Joseph Penn, mental health director of the University of Texas Medical Branch, explained that Thomas’s mental illness is so profound that he experiences “bizarre and grandiose delusions” despite his “current antipsychotic and other psychotropic medication treatment regimen.” He has what Penn called “an extensive past psychiatric history of schizoaffective disorder.”
That disorder, Penn adds, “is a serious mental illness that includes psychotic schizophrenia-like symptoms such as hallucinations (typically auditory) and delusions (fixed false beliefs), disorganized speech and behavior, combined with a major mood disorder and mood symptoms such as mania or depression.”
Prison staff “have also raised concerns regarding the stressors of being moved to a new and unfamiliar location with unknown new staff and a new physical plant and sounds and other sensory experiences (due to being legally blind) that he is not familiar with could certainly exacerbate his fragile psychotic illness.”
Dr. Penn says that “Mr. Thomas is one of the most treatment resistant/refractory, and complicated patients that I have ever evaluated, consulted on, or treated.” But Texas wants to execute him anyway.
Executing someone in Thomas’s condition would be indecent and inhumane.
As I noted last September, “Punishment in the U.S. is not supposed to be a random act. It is supposed to communicate to the person being punished the social condemnation of the crime they committed. … But if it does not communicate to the criminal that message of condemnation, it fails to satisfy the requirements of justice.”
Almost 40 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court said that the Constitution forbids the execution of people who are deemed incompetent. Writing for the majority, Justice Thurgood Marshall said in such cases, “an execution has questionable retributive value, presents no example to others, and thus has no deterrence value, and simply offends humanity.”
As Marshall explained, “Whether the aim is to protect the condemned from fear and pain without comfort of understanding, or to protect the dignity of society itself from the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance, the restriction finds enforcement in the Eighth Amendment.”
In 2007, the court reaffirmed that view, stating that it would be cruel to execute someone whose “mental illness deprives him of ‘the mental capacity to understand that [he] is being executed as a punishment for a crime.’”
This view is no mere passing fancy. In its earlier decision, the court noted that as far back as the 17th century, English common law held that putting a “mad man” to death would be “a miserable spectacle, both against law, and of extreme inhumanity and cruelty, and can be no example to others.”
Scholars have found a similar view expressed in medieval legal systems, dating them to the 12th century. At that time, madness was thought to be a punishment dispensed by God. In their view, it would be inappropriate for humans to impose additional punishment.
But whether in the past or in our time, prohibiting the execution of people whose mental condition renders them unfit to be executed has been easier said than done. While surveys show that 60 percent of the American people oppose executing individuals who have severe mental illnesses, many of those individuals have been put to death, and few have succeeded in proving they were incompetent to be executed.
As the Death Penalty Information Center notes, “It is difficult to define the class of mentally-ill defendants who should be exempted.” And because that standard doesn’t define itself, some death penalty supporters are suspicious of claims that someone is not competent to be executed.
In Thomas’s case, such suspicions are clearly not warranted.
Among other things, in the weeks before Thomas killed his wife and two children, he attempted suicide three times and complained of hearing voices no one else heard. A week after the crime, he took out one eyeball with his own fingers. Later, after he was sent to death row, he gouged out his other eye and ate it.
He did all that because he had been commanded to do so by divine voices in his head.
It is time for Texas to give up its misbegotten quest to execute Thomas, or for its governor to commute his sentence. If it does neither and succeeds in its plan to kill him, his execution would surely be “a miserable spectacle … of extreme inhumanity and cruelty.”
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.
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https://davisvanguard.org/2026/03/texas-court-postpones-thomas-hearing/
Doctor Says Andre Thomas Too Mentally Ill to Be Transported for Competency-to-Execution Hearing
Hailey Ngo, March 6, 2026
A Texas court has postponed the competency hearing of Andre Thomas, widely considered one of the most severely mentally ill individuals on death row in the state’s history, after doctors concluded he is too mentally ill to be safely transported for the proceedings.
The hearing in the 15th Judicial District Court in Grayson County was scheduled to begin Monday, March 9, 2026, but was postponed Tuesday after medical experts raised serious concerns about Mr. Thomas’ mental condition.
Mr. Thomas’ execution date was withdrawn in 2023 in order to determine whether he is competent to be executed. The hearing had been scheduled for early March, but a new date has not been set.
Andre Thomas has faced mental illness throughout his life. While growing up in extreme poverty, he began hearing voices at age 9 and made his first suicide attempt at age 10.
He repeatedly sought mental health help but did not receive it, despite being taken to a hospital where he was ultimately left alone.
In 2004, Mr. Thomas walked out of that hospital and murdered his estranged wife, a white woman, their son and his wife’s daughter before stabbing himself in the chest. He later turned himself in to police.
Mr. Thomas currently experiences schizophrenia and has permanently blinded himself by gouging out both of his eyes and consuming one of them while in jail. He believes he was “following the commands of the divine voices in his head.”
He experiences fixed delusions despite massive doses of antipsychotic medications, hallucinations and has attempted suicide many more times, “seeking help for the incessant voices in his head.”
The doctors who evaluated him concluded that he was psychotic and hallucinating.
The state’s experts were unable to reexamine Mr. Thomas amid concerns that he is too mentally ill to be safely transferred from Texas’ Wayne Scott Unit.
Dr. Joseph V. Penn filed a letter with the court describing Mr. Thomas as “one of the most impaired and complicated patients he has ever encountered.”
Dr. Penn added that Mr. Thomas’ mental illness is so intractable and severe that transferring him to Grayson County would raise serious concerns about additional self-harm and psychotic deterioration.
In July 2024, Dr. George Corvin, a court-appointed psychiatrist, conducted a 10-hour evaluation of Mr. Thomas and concluded that he is not competent to be executed under the prevailing legal standard.
Dr. Corvin stated, “The nature of his delusional beliefs directly undermines his understanding and comprehension of the circumstances surrounding his potential execution.”
According to Dr. Corvin, Mr. Thomas can articulate the government’s stated reason for executing him but does not believe it is the real reason.
He stated, “Mr. Thomas delusionally believes that the government would most likely be unsuccessful if they were to try to execute him, such that if his heart were to stop, it would immediately start again.”
The United States Supreme Court has cited the Eighth Amendment in prohibiting the execution of a prisoner who lacks a rational understanding of why he is being executed.
Under the legal standard, a prisoner’s understanding must be meaningful, not merely the ability to repeat the stated reason for execution based on conviction of a particular offense.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of Mr. Thomas’ severe mental illness and inability to be transported for a competency hearing, the state of Texas continues urging that his execution proceed.
At Mr. Thomas’ trial, the jury expressed racial bias on their jury questionnaires, showing overt opposition to biracial marriages and families.
The prosecution also appealed to the jurors’ racial prejudices by eliciting irrelevant testimony about sexual relationships Mr. Thomas had with other white women.
Mental health professionals and organizations across Texas and the nation have expressed support for clemency for Mr. Thomas.