A Tennessee jury took only 2 hours to con­vict and anoth­er hour to sen­tence Richard Taylor to death. Taylor suf­fers from men­tal ill­ness and defend­ed him­self. The tri­al took place 19 years after Taylor’s orig­i­nal 1984 death sen­tence, which was set aside because he had inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion and his com­plex men­tal-health his­to­ry had not been ful­ly inves­ti­gat­ed. In the years since that rul­ing, Taylor has been deemed incom­pe­tent to stand tri­al, but a judge recent­ly ruled that Taylor could be retried for the crime if he took his anti-psy­chot­ic med­ica­tions and was able to under­stand the legal pro­ceed­ings against him. Before his tri­al, Taylor told reporters for The Tennessean that he hoped to be con­vict­ed in the belief that he would be allowed to stop tak­ing the med­ica­tions that he claims are fog­ging his mind, turn­ing him into a woman and silenc­ing the singing voic­es in his head. This belief con­tin­ued as Taylor rep­re­sent­ed him­self in the pro­ceed­ings with­out any assis­tance from lawyers. Taylor — who suf­fers from bor­der­line per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der and schiz­o­phre­nia — put on no evi­dence, pre­sent­ed no clos­ing argu­ment, and wore sun­glass­es through­out the pro­ceed­ings. He offered the jury no expla­na­tions or mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors to con­sid­er before they sen­tenced him to death. (The Tennessean, October 17, 2003) See DPIC’s report With Justice for Few: The Growing Crisis in Death Penalty Representation.

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