Richard Taylor, a death row inmate in Tennessee suf­fer­ing from severe men­tal ill­ness, was resen­tenced to life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole after a plea bar­gain with the state. Taylor was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the killing of a prison guard in 1981 after the prison had stopped giv­ing him his anti-psy­chot­ic med­ica­tion. Deputy District Attorney Derek Smith said, ​“Our office decid­ed that it would be in the best inter­est of the tax­pay­ers to spend the hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars it would cost to retry this case in oth­er pros­e­cu­tions.” According to one of his attor­neys, Cassandra Stubbs of the ACLU, the cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty con­sid­ered Taylor to be men­tal­ly ill, knew he had pre­vi­ous­ly tried to kill him­self by swal­low­ing glass, but decid­ed to stop giv­ing him his psychiatric medication. 

Since being con­vict­ed of the mur­der, Taylor report­ed­ly received no psy­chi­atric ser­vices. After his first con­vic­tion was over­turned, Taylor was allowed to rep­re­sent him­self at a sec­ond tri­al, wear­ing prison garb and sun­glass­es. He made bizarre and delu­sion­al state­ments and pre­sent­ed no defense. That con­vic­tion was also over­turned. Defense attor­ney Stubbs said, ​“Like oth­er defen­dants who fall into this trag­ic cat­e­go­ry [of severe men­tal ill­ness, he] was trapped by his own delu­sions and was inca­pable of pre­sent­ing a defense or introduc[ing] the very evi­dence nec­es­sary to save his life.”
(M. Kline, ​“Plea Deal in 1981 Turney stab­bing gives killer life sen­tence,” The Tennessean, June 4, 2008). See also ACLU Press Release, June 3, 2008. See Mental Illness.

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