Editorial: Texas Should Bar the Death Penalty for Severely Mentally Ill Defendants

An edi­to­r­i­al in the Dallas Morning News urges the Texas leg­is­la­ture to pass a bill to ban the death penal­ty for peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness, stat­ing, it ​“seems like an obvi­ous deci­sion in a decent soci­ety.” House Bill 727, spon­sored by Rep. Toni Rose (D‑Dallas), passed the Texas House on April 5, 2023, by a vote of 97 – 48 and is pend­ing before the Texas Senate.

“While the Supreme Court has banned the death penal­ty for juve­nile offend­ers and peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, Texans with sev­er­al men­tal ill­ness­es such as schiz­o­phre­nia are still end­ing up on death row,” the edi­to­r­i­al notes. It goes on to describe the case of Andre Thomas, who was sen­tenced to death in Texas despite suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness so acute that he cut out both of his eyes and ate one, claim­ing that it was nec­es­sary to pre­vent the gov­ern­ment from hear­ing his thoughts. 

HB 727 (as amend­ed) would elim­i­nate the death penal­ty as a sen­tenc­ing option for some­one with schiz­o­phre­nia or schizoaf­fec­tive dis­or­der at the time of their crime that impairs their capac­i­ty to appre­ci­ate the wrong­ful­ness of their actions or exer­cise ratio­nal judg­ment. As the edi­to­r­i­al explains, the pro­pos­al ​“lays out a pre­tri­al pro­ce­dure for a dis­in­ter­est­ed expert to exam­ine the defen­dant and for a jury to deter­mine whether the defen­dant is inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion.” Defendants could still be sen­tenced to life in prison.

Two states – Ohio and Kentucky – have imple­ment­ed exemp­tions to the death penal­ty for peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness. Rep. Rose has pro­posed the mea­sure in Texas in the last two leg­isla­tive ses­sions. Both times, it passed the House, but failed in the Senate.