Scott Panetti case roundup: New York Times Editorial, Dallas Morning News Editorial, and more
Stefanie Faucher
New York Times - Will Texas Kill an Insane Man?
Dallas Morning News - Texas prepares to execute schizophrenic inmate despite call for clemency
Fort Worth Star-Telegam - Texas prepares to execute schizophrenic inmate despite call for clemency
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/opinion/will-texas-kill-an-insane-man.html?_r=0
Will Texas Kill an Insane Man?
November 23, 2014
On Dec. 3, Texas plans to execute an inmate named Scott Panetti, who was convicted in 1995 for murdering his in-laws with a hunting rifle. There is no question that Mr. Panetti committed the murders. There is also no question that he is severely mentally ill, and has been for decades.
During his capital murder trial, at which he was inexplicably allowed to represent himself, Mr. Panetti dressed in a cowboy suit and attempted to subpoena, among others, John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ. A standby lawyer said his behavior was “scary” and “trance-like,” and called the trial “a judicial farce.”
It was not an act. Mr. Panetti, now 56, was first diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 20, and in the years before the murders he was hospitalized several times for delusions and psychotic episodes.
In this respect, he is no different from the estimated 350,000 inmates around the country with mental illness — 10 times the number of people in state psychiatric hospitals. But Mr. Panetti is not just another insane prisoner; his name is synonymous with the Supreme Court’s modern jurisprudence about mental illness on death row. In Panetti v. Quarterman, decided in 2007, the justices held that it is not enough for a defendant simply to be aware that he is going to be executed and why — the previous standard the court had used in permitting the execution of the mentally ill. Rather, he must have a “rational understanding” of why the state plans to kill him.
Noting Mr. Panetti’s “well-documented history of mental illness,” the court held that capital punishment serves no retributive purpose when the defendant’s understanding of crime and punishment is so distorted that it “has little or no relation to the understanding of those concepts shared by the community as a whole.”
For example, Mr. Panetti understood that the state claimed the reason for his death sentence was the murder of his in-laws, but he believed the real reason was “spiritual warfare” between “the demons and the forces of the darkness and God and the angels and the forces of light.”
But the justices refused to set precise guidelines for determining whether someone is competent enough to be executed, and they did not overturn Mr. Panetti’s sentence. Instead, they sent the case back to the lower courts for a fuller reconsideration of his current mental state.
By any reasonable standard — not to mention the findings of multiple mental-health experts over the years — Mr. Panetti is mentally incompetent. But Texas, along with several other stubborn states, has a long history of finding the loopholes in Supreme Court rulings restricting the death penalty. The state has continued to argue that Mr. Panetti is exaggerating the extent of his illness, and that he understands enough to be put to death — a position a federal appeals court accepted last year, even though it agreed that he was “seriously mentally ill.”
Mr. Panetti has not had a mental-health evaluation since 2007. In a motion hastily filed this month, his volunteer lawyers requested that his execution be stayed, that a lawyer be appointed for him, and that he receive funding for a new mental-health assessment, saying his functioning has only gotten worse. For instance, he now claims that a prison dentist implanted a transmitter in his tooth.
The lawyers would have made this motion weeks earlier, immediately after a Texas judge set Mr. Panetti’s execution date. But since no one — not the judge, not the district attorney, not the attorney general — notified them (or even Mr. Panetti himself), they had no idea their client was scheduled to be killed until they read about it in a newspaper. State officials explained that the law did not require them to provide notification.
On Nov. 19, a Texas court denied the lawyers’ motion. A civilized society should not be in the business of executing anybody. But it certainly cannot pretend to be adhering to any morally acceptable standard of culpability if it kills someone like Scott Panetti.
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http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/11/22/6310587/clemency-sought-for-schizophrenic.html
Texas prepares to execute schizophrenic inmate despite call for clemency
By Anna M. Tinsley, November 24, 2014
As Texas prepares to execute its 11th inmate in a year with the fewest executions in nearly two decades, legal and mental health groups across the state and the nation are scrambling to spare Scott Panetti from the death chamber.
Panetti, a schizophrenic who is scheduled for lethal injection Dec. 3, was convicted of fatally shooting his in-laws in front of his estranged wife and children more than two decades ago in their home in Fredericksburg, Texas.
A new clemency petition has been filed to try to block the execution of Panetti, who acted as his own attorney and appeared in court wearing a purple cowboy suit and a 10-gallon hat. Some worry he is so mentally ill that he won't understand why he is being put to death.
"The case of Scott Louis Panetti is a judicial disaster that has attracted national and international outrage - and for good reason," according to the latest clemency petition. "Evidence of his incompetency runs like a fissure through every proceeding in his case - from arraignment to execution.
"The execution of Scott Panetti would cross a moral line."
Texas, which has long led the nation in executions, is on track to put the fewest inmates to death since 1996 and some believe the death penalty may be fading away.
The state has 273 inmates on death row, state records show.
Nine executions are scheduled for the first four months of 2015.
"Texas has a deep commitment to the death penalty," said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. "In this state's political culture, crime is to be treated very seriously, and the threat of the death penalty is one device that can be held over the head of criminals.
"The decrease in executions shows there is a very serious alternative to the death penalty."
In 2005, legislators changed the law to give juries an alternative to the death penalty: life in prison without parole.
Since then, jurors have overwhelmingly chosen that option, giving 687 people life without parole, compared with 84 death sentences, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
A Gillespie County judge recently scheduled Panetti's execution for Dec. 3.
But Panetti's case has been in and out of the courts for years because of the 56-year-old's history of mental illness.
Through the years, justices have tried to determine whether Panetti, who has been diagnosed as schizophrenic, can understand that he has been sentenced to die and why.
"Mr. Panetti has not had a competency hearing in nearly seven years," according to one letter calling for clemency. "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."
During his trial in 1995, when he was convicted of killing his in-laws, Joe and Amanda Alvarado, Panetti tried to call President John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ as witnesses.
When Panetti refused to take his antipsychotic drugs, the judge allowed him to represent himself. Notes taken by Panetti's standby counsel described his behavior as "trancelike," "bizarre" and "scary."
A group of officials including former Gov. Mark White has also written a clemency letter.
"We are deeply troubled that a capital sentence was the result of a trial where a man with schizophrenia represented himself, dressed in a costume," the letter stated. "We come together from across the partisan and ideological divide and are united in our belief that, irrespective of whether we support or oppose the death penalty, this is not an appropriate case for execution."
Former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul has also sent a letter.
Panetti's execution would be the 11th in Texas this year.
That's the fewest since 1996, when there were three, state data show. But it's still more than any other state this year: Florida and Missouri have had eight each, Oklahoma three, and Georgia, Ohio and Arizona one each, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.
"Texas is the capital of capital punishment," said Richard Dieter, the center's executive director. "Clearly, people see it as the most likely place to have an execution."
But 2014 is a far cry from some of Texas' busiest years for executions, when some said the state was home to the "conveyor belt of death." There were 40 in 2000, 35 in 1999 and 37 in 1997.
"Things are changing in Texas," Dieter said, adding that it's not just demographics but also new laws and new elected officials. "Texas is not the dominant state in the death penalty that it has been."
On average, an inmate spends 11 years on Death Row before being executed, state data show. A decline in executions was expected as the number of people sentenced to life without parole rose, Dieter said.
Before that option was added in 2005, Texas juries had two choices - the death penalty and life in prison with the possibility of parole, meaning that some inmates convicted at a young age could be released back into the community after serving 40 years.
When Gov. Rick Perry signed the life-without-parole measure into law, he said, "I believe this bill will improve our criminal justice system because it gives jurors a new option to protect the public with the certainty a convicted killer will never roam our streets again."
The first year the option was available, only 17 people were sentenced to life without parole. That rose through the years, peaking at 109 in 2012. Through August this year, 69 people had been sentenced to life without parole, state records show.
Since the law changed, the number of people sentenced to death has hit double digits only three times - 10 in 2006, 15 in 2007 and 11 in 2009. This year, four people have been sent to death row, according to state records.
"With less death sentences coming in, it was bound to be true that the number of executions would go down as well," Dieter said. "The whole system is receding."
At the same time, efforts have grown to exonerate innocent death row inmates.
Since 1973, Texas has had the third-most inmates exonerated - 12 - behind Florida, with 25, and Illinois, with 20, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
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