The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will hear argu­ments on September 23 regard­ing Scott Panetti​’s com­pe­ten­cy to be exe­cut­ed. Panetti is a severe­ly men­tal­ly ill man who rep­re­sent­ed him­self at his tri­al wear­ing a cow­boy cos­tume, and attempt­ed to sub­poe­na the Pope, John F. Kennedy, and Jesus Christ. As the court pre­pares to hear Panetti’s case, opin­ion pieces in two Texas news­pa­pers used it to illus­trate larg­er prob­lems with the death penal­ty and men­tal ill­ness. In an op-ed in The Dallas Morning News, con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Richard Viguerie said Panetti’s exe­cu­tion would not be ​“a pro­por­tion­ate response to mur­der,” but ​“would only under­mine the public’s faith in a fair and moral jus­tice sys­tem.” He wrote that peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness, like juve­niles and peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, should not be exe­cut­ed because they have dimin­ished capac­i­ties to under­stand the con­se­quences of their actions. ​“The ratio­nales for the death penal­ty — ret­ri­bu­tion and deter­rence — sim­ply do not apply to a severe­ly men­tal­ly ill indi­vid­ual like Panetti, who believes that a lis­ten­ing device has been implant­ed in one of his teeth.” Executing Panetti, Viguerie said, would be ​“a moral fail­ure for con­ser­v­a­tives.” A Houston Chronicle edi­to­r­i­al dis­cussed Panetti’s case and the case of anoth­er men­tal­ly ill cap­i­tal defen­dant, James Calvert. A Texas court ter­mi­nat­ed Calvert’s self-rep­re­sen­ta­tion after, in the words of the edi­to­r­i­al, Calvert ​“took to defend­ing him­self with a far­ci­cal style that like­ly did more to hurt than help his case.” Just before the court ter­mi­nat­ed Calvert’s self-rep­re­sen­ta­tion, a court deputy admin­is­tered an elec­tric shock to Calvert, caus­ing him to scream for sev­er­al sec­onds. The edi­to­r­i­al said that “[t]he ulti­mate pun­ish­ment — death — mer­its our high­est stan­dards of care” and that ​“judges must care­ful­ly bal­ance the Sixth Amendment’s right to rep­re­sent one­self with the guar­an­tee of com­pe­tent rep­re­sen­ta­tion.” Calling for the end of the death penal­ty, the edi­to­r­i­al board wrote, ​“Cases like Calvert and Panetti’s show how some­thing as seri­ous as life and death can eas­i­ly be turned into a farce.” 

In December 2014, Viguerie and more than a dozen oth­er promi­nent nation­al con­ser­v­a­tives wrote a let­ter to then Texas Governor Rick Perry ask­ing that he com­mute Panetti’s sen­tence. The let­ter said: ​“As con­ser­v­a­tives, we must be on guard that such an extra­or­di­nary gov­ern­ment sanc­tion not be used against a per­son who is men­tal­ly inca­pable of ratio­nal thought. It would be immoral for the gov­ern­ment to take this man’s life.”

(R. Viguerie, ​“Richard A. Viguerie: Executing Scott Panetti would be a moral fail­ure for con­ser­v­a­tives,” The Dallas Morning News, September 16, 2015; Editorial, ​“Editorial: End exe­cu­tions,” Houston Chronicle, September 16, 2015.) See Mental Illness and Editorials.

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