Stefanie Faucher
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Federal court should spare Texas death row inmate Scott Panetti
Idaho Mountain Express - Insane justice
NPR “Here and Now” - Appeals Court Halts Texas Execution
U.S. News and World Report - Views You Can Use: A Plea for Panetti
Houston Chronicle Blog - Abbott skeptical Panetti too delusional for execution
Fox 26 (Milwaukee, WI) - Appeals Court postpones execution of Texas death row inmate, a Wisconsin native
Poynette Press (Poynette, WI) - Panetti’s execution stayed
ModVive - Will stay of execution in Scott Panetti case move Perry to act?
Guardian Liberty Voice - Execution of Murderer Halted
----
Federal court should spare Texas death row inmate Scott Panetti
December 5, 2014
A federal appeals court, considering "late arriving and complex legal questions," on Wednesday spared the life of Wisconsin native Scott Panetti — at least for now.
The court said it would consider the argument that Panetti is too mentally ill to execute. The court should consider that argument, because it's clear to us that he is mentally ill and, as such, should not be killed by the state.
Panetti, 56, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and hospitalized 15 times over a period of years before he murdered his wife's parents in Fredericksburg, Texas, on Sept. 8, 1992.
As the Journal Sentinel's Meg Kissinger explained, Panetti's trial was farcical: He represented himself wearing a purple cowboy outfit and tried to subpoena Jesus Christ. Six years earlier, he buried furniture in the backyard because he was convinced that the devil was trying to kill him and his family. Panetti's case should never have even come to trial.
We are not arguing that Panetti shouldn't pay for his crime. What he did — the murder of Joe and Amanda Alvarado — was horrible. They deserve justice. But there is no justice in the State of Texas killing a man who clearly suffers from mental illness. The idea, advanced by prosecutors, that Panetti is faking his illness is laughable given even the spare facts that we know.
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."
Let's hope so.
----
Insane justice
December 5, 2014
Scott Panetti was supposed to die by lethal injection this week. There is no doubt that he murdered his in-laws, but he is so severely mentally ill that he thinks he is going to be killed by aliens. Panetti’s case is just the tip of the iceberg that is the nation’s poor treatment of the mentally ill.
Texas found Panetti competent to stand trial, despite a history of severe mental issues since he was 12. He represented himself at trial, appeared there in a purple cowboy outfit and attempted to subpoena more than 200 people to testify on his behalf, including Jesus Christ. Apparently, the definition of sanity in Texas is broad, to say the least.
Now, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wants to hear further arguments before it decides whether it is acceptable for the state to kill Panetti.
In the 1960s and ’70s, substitution of small-scale, community-based treatment for mental illness for the warehouse-like institutions that had previously housed these patients got off to a good start. In the ’80s, government cost-cutting priorities and a nearly obsessive focus on law-and-order policies began shifting money and policy toward incarceration instead of treatment for the mentally ill.
The results have been entirely predictable. As law professor Bernard E. Harcourt wrote in a New York Times opinion piece, “Over the past 40 years, the United States dismantled a colossal mental health complex and rebuilt—bed by bed—an enormous prison.”
It doesn’t have to be this way. Models exist that are successful in housing, treating and providing follow-up support for the mentally ill. All that is required is public support for helping them and opposition to killing them.
----
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/12/03/mentally-ill-panetti
Appeals Court Halts Texas Execution
December 3, 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.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a reprieve late Wednesday morning, less than eight hours before condemned killer Scott Panetti was set to receive a lethal injection.
Panetti was sentenced to death for fatally shooting his estranged wife’s parents 22 years ago.
Panetti’s lawyers are he’s too mentally ill to qualify for capital punishment, and they sought a delay for new competency tests.
His attorneys also had appeals 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.
Here & Now’s Lisa Mullins speaks with Panetti’s co-council, Kathryn Kase, executive director of Texas Defender Service about his fate.
----
Views You Can Use: A Plea for Panetti
A federal appeals court stayed the execution of a mentally ill man after pleas from the U.N. and others.
By Rachel Brody, December 3, 2014
A federal appeals court has stayed the execution of Scott Panetti, a diagnosed schizophrenic, who was scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday evening. "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," wrote the 5th Circuit court.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had voted unanimously on Monday to deny Panetti clemency, despite calls from mental health experts, advocacy groups and politicians to delay the sentence and reassess the inmate’s competency. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who has remained silent on the issue, could have granted a 30-day stay but not without the board’s vote for clemency.
“No one could dispute that Panetti’s actions were atrocious beyond words,” wrote Nancy Leong and Justin Marceau at The Atlantic. Panetti, while off his medication, shot his then-mother- and father-in-law in front of his wife and daughter in 1992. “But the execution of a man grievously afflicted by mental illness for three decades would in no way compensate for the murder of his in-laws,” they argued.
“Scott is not mentally competent,” wrote Panetti’s sister Victoria in an online petition, which has collected nearly 97,000 signatures. “[H]e would go to the execution chamber believing his fixed delusion that he is being put to death for preaching the Gospels, not for the murder of his wife’s parents.”
Panetti, who was hospitalized for his mental illness 15 times beginning in 1978, represented himself at his 1995 trial, wore a cowboy costume and attempted to subpoena John F. Kennedy, the Pope and Jesus Christ.
Many say the court should have intervened early on and insisted on outside counsel for such an obviously ill man. But the failure of American “legal safeguards" did not end there, asserted Ron Honberg, national director for policy and legal affairs at the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
In 2007, the Supreme Court took on Panetti’s case and ruled in his favor, establishing the standard that states cannot execute prisoners who don’t understand their sentence. But the case went back to the 5th Circuit, which after further assessment, judged Panetti competent and “ignored Panetti’s persistent irrational beliefs,” said Honberg. Most people, he wrote, "wrongly presume that people with mental illness are protected by our laws.”
Right-wing politicians have also voiced their opposition to Panetti’s execution. Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and over a dozen other prominent conservatives sent a letter to Perry, urging the governor to change the inmate's sentence to life in prison. “Rather than serving as a measured response to murder,” they wrote, “the execution of Mr. Panetti would only serve to undermine the public’s faith in a fair and moral justice system.”
Even human rights investigators at the United Nations have stepped in, urging Texas and the federal government to halt the execution. "There is no doubt that it is inherently cruel and unworthy of civilized societies to execute persons with mental disabilities," said U.N. torture investigator Juan Mendez in a statement.
Ron Powers, writing for CNN.com, agreed that Panetti’s execution would serve nothing at all – not comfort, not protection, nor on the opposite end, spur us to reform mental health care or understand the stigma of disease. “Speaking honestly, I can envision only one certain consequence of Scott Panetti's execution,” wrote Powers, “a spiritually declining nation will have shoved the lethal needle a little deeper into its own vein.”
----
http://blog.chron.com/texaspolitics/2014/12/abbott-skeptical-panetti-too-delusional-for-execution/
Abbott skeptical Panetti too delusional for execution
By Patrick Svitek, December 4, 2014
AUSTIN — Gov.-elect Greg Abbott expressed skepticism Thursday morning that convicted killer Scott Panetti is too mentally ill to be legally executed, wading into the issue a day after a federal appeals court granted Panetti a reprieve.
“Anyone can do strange things, and if strange things were good enough to get criminals off of Death Row, believe me, they’d be doing strange things all the time, every day,” Abbott, the outgoing attorney general, said in an interview on a Dallas-Fort Worth radio show. “Based upon the conclusions of many judges in this case, this guy is not insane and at some point in time, this decision just needs to be put to rest.”
Hours before Panetti was to be put to death Wednesday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halted the execution, saying it would like the chance to “fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter.” Minutes after the court released its order, outgoing Gov. Rick Perry told reporters he respected the decision, but offered no hints as to how he would have acted if it was up to him.
On Thursday morning, Abbott did not respond to a question from KSKY/660 AM host Mark Davis about whether he would stop the execution as governor, but voiced agreement with several previous rulings that found Panetti to be competent. Panetti’s lawyers say he has not been evaluated in seven years, a claim Abbott said shows “one of the problems in our capital punishment system.”
“It drags out for so long,” Abbott told Davis. “This has been in the process now for more than two decades, and to say, ‘Well, we need a checkup every seven years or so,’ is something that will ensure that capital punishment is dragged out forever.”
Panetti was convicted and sentenced to death for fatally shooting his estranged wife’s parents in 1992. His attorneys say he was diagnosed with schizophrenia years before the incident.
----
http://fox6now.com/author/myrasanchick/
Appeals Court postpones execution of Texas death row inmate, a Wisconsin native
December 3, 2014
Watch video at: http://fox6now.com/2014/12/03/texas-killers-mental-state-in-question-as-execution-looms/
----
http://www.modvive.com/2014/12/04/will-stay-execution-scott-panetti-case-move-perry-act/
Will stay of execution in Scott Panetti case move Perry to act?
By Lillian Davis, December 4, 2014
Scott Panetti from Kerrville, Texas, was scheduled to die on Wednesday, December 3, 2014. He has received a stay of execution from a federal appeals court. The 5th Circuit Court in response to his appeal 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.”
Scott Panetti was condemned for two murders which occurred in 1992. Panetti shaved his head, dressed in camouflage, went to his in-laws home, and murdered his mother and father-in-law. His wife and daughter saw the whole thing.
Scott is a diagnosed schizophrenic. He was diagnosed in 1978. At the time he committed the murders he was off his medication.
His original trial and sentencing, according to court observers and his stand-by attorney, were a complete farce.
Panetti was allowed to represent himself, (as the stand-by attorney), in both the guilt and penalty phases of the trial. He dressed in a cowboy costume, with a purple bandanna when he went to court. He tried to subpoena John F. Kennedy, the Pope, and Jesus Christ, along with 200 other people.
He was incoherent much of the time and rambling at other times. He even fell asleep during the trial.
When he described the shooting, he took on a character he called “Sarge,” narrating the events in the third person, and pointing an imaginary rifle at the jurors. It was clear he frightened them.
The jury convicted him of the murders.
During the penalty phase of the trial, he called only one witness, his stand-by counsel. The jury sentenced Panetti to death after only one day of deliberation.
Remember, this man is a diagnosed schizophrenic.
In fact, he has suffered from schizophrenia and other mental illness since at least 1978 when he was first hospitalized due to his mental state. He has since been hospitalized 15 separate times.
At one point in his delusion, he tried to exorcise his home by burying the furniture in his backyard because he thought the devil was in it. Later, he was committed to a psychiatric hospital after swinging a sword at his wife and daughter and threatening to kill them.
It was sometime after that attempt that he killed his in-laws.
The case went before the 5th Circuit Court in 2007; after further assessment, they judged Panetti competent, ignoring his persistent, irrational beliefs and his fixed delusion. This same court now stays his execution.
Like all death row inmates, he has had a long series of appeals, all focusing on his mental illness. In October, the Supreme Court denied his petition for review.
In 1986, Ford vs. Wainwright, the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute the mentally insane. It is important to note that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, the court that rules on litigation for many southern states, including Texas, has never found any prisoner incompetent for execution due to mental illness. Again, this is the same court that is hearing his appeal now.
Advocates for the mentally ill say the court should have intervened in Panetti’s case early on. They contend that he should never have been allowed to represent himself. He was clearly mentally ill.
Ron Honberg, National Director for Policy and Legal Affairs at the National Alliance on Mental Illness says that there are many legal safeguards that are “meant to protect the inherent dignity and civil rights of Americans with mental illness when they come into the criminal justice system.”
Honberg goes on to assert that many people believe that the United States does not execute people with severe mental illness; they presume that our laws protect the mentally ill. Most of us have been wrongly informed by the legal portrayals in TV shows, books, and movies, that the mental ill will not be executed. Sadly, the present case shows that the safeguards can and do fail more often than we realize.
Many people are petitioning the courts on Panetti’s behalf. His sister, Victoria, started an on-line petition stating, “Scott is not mentally competent . . . He would go to the execution chamber believing his fixed delusion that he is being put to death for preaching the Gospels, not for the murder of his wife’s parents.” The petition has received over 95,000 signatures.
No one is saying he should be free, no one, not even his sister is calling for his release. Everyone recognizes the heinousness of his crime and all believe he should stay in prison. Their appeal is simply that he not be put to death.
Politicians from both sides have voiced opposition to the execution. The former Attorney General from Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli and more than a dozen well-known conservatives sent a letter to Texas Governor Rick Perry. They are asking him to change Panetti’s sentence from death to life in prison.
They told the governor, “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.”
Human rights investigators from the United Nations are urging Texas and the federal government to stop the execution. U.N. torture investigator, Juan Mendez, wrote in a statement, “There is no doubt that it is inherently cruel and unworthy of civilized societies to execute a person with mental disabilities.”
Now that the 5th Circuit Court has given Panetti a stay, will Perry grant clemency? Will he listen to the voices of reason telling him that executing someone who does not understand his crime or the punishment serves no purpose?
----
http://guardianlv.com/2014/12/execution-of-murderer-halted/
Execution of Murderer Halted
By Kelli Patterson, December 4, 2014
Just hours before he was scheduled to die, death row inmate and convicted murderer Scott Panetti’s execution was halted by the courts. The convicted murderer, who killed his in-laws over 20 years ago, and was due to die by lethal injection. He just missed his impending execution when courts determined that they need more time to consider legal issues regarding the case before his execution.
Panetti has suffered from mental illness his entire life, his first mental health diagnosis being recorded over 14 years before he murdered his in-laws. He was hospitalized in over a dozen hospitals for his odd behavior over a dozen year span before committing the murders. The most severe of disorders that he had been diagnosed with is schizophrenia, a disorder that can cause an individual to hear voices and to have hallucinations. Sometimes these voices may tell the person to do things, or the hallucinations may scare a person into reacting out of fear. He had also been diagnosed with manic depression, auditory hallucinations and paranoia long before the murders occurred.
During the summer of 1992, Panetti and his then wife Sonja Alvarado separated due to Panetti’s alcoholism and abusive behaviors. Sonja had taken her three-year old daughter to stay with her parents in Texas. On the morning of September 8, 1992, Panetti, dressed in army fatigues and a freshly shaven head, broke into the Alvarado’s home. He then shot Sonja’s parents, Amanda and Joe Alvarado, at close range with a sawn off shotgun. He allowed his wife and daughter to leave the home unharmed. His wife would later come to agree with the defense, that her husband should not be deemed fit for trial due to his mental state. It would be declarations such as these that would play a part in the halt of the execution of the murderer.
In July of 1994, there was a trail to determine whether or not Panetti was competent to stand trial which was determined to be a mistrial when the jury was unable to come to reach a verdict. The second trial was the following September and Panetti’s lawyer claimed that he was not able to communicate with his client due to his delusional thinking. During that same trial, a psychiatrist for the defense agreed that Panetti was not competent to stand trial. A psychiatrist for the prosecutor agreed that Panetti’s delusions could interfere with his ability to communicate with council and also agreed with Panetti’s prior diagnosis of schizophrenia; however, he deemed Panetti competent to stand trial. The jury agreed and the case was sent to trial.
The trial took place in September of 1995. Panetti chose to represent himself in the court proceedings. The court proceedings would turn out to be very strange in the eyes of those who had the chance to witness it. Panetti was trying to subpoena people, such as JFK and Jesus Christ, as witnesses for his defense. He wore strange outfits and would engage in bizarre ramblings that would cause the jury and witnesses to become disgusted and annoyed at his behaviors. The trial would result in Panetti being found guilty and sentenced to execution by lethal injection.
Panetti’s current lawyer, Katheryn Kase claims that her clients mental health is continuously deteriorating and at a rapid rate. Since there hasn’t been an evaluation to determine Panetti’s mental health state in over seven years, one should be done to determine if he understands his punishment of execution, Kase states. Not only are his lawyers, now ex-wife, and family fighting for Panetti’s sentence to be overturned, so are advocates, mental health professionals, and members of the American Bar Association. For now the execution of the murderer has been halted, the question is for how long?
--