Saying that he has a per­ma­nent con­di­tion that makes him too men­tal­ly ill to exe­cute, the office of California Attorney General Kamala Harris (pic­tured) recent­ly asked the California Supreme Court to remove Ronnie McPeters from California’s death row and resen­tence him to life without parole. 

The action is rare because McPeters is not fac­ing an immi­nent exe­cu­tion date, but Chief Deputy Attorney General Nathan Barankin said his office now con­sid­ers some death row pris­on­ers so griev­ous­ly incom­pe­tent” that they will nev­er be able to be exe­cut­ed. The office says that such pris­on­ers should be declared incom­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed and removed from death row. 

McPeters has been on death row for 30 years, and is one of nine California death row pris­on­ers whom fed­er­al judges have found incom­pe­tent to assist their attor­neys in habeas cor­pus appeals. His men­tal con­di­tion has fur­ther dete­ri­o­rat­ed while on death row, where he has received incon­sis­tent men­tal health care: some prison doc­tors have invol­un­tar­i­ly med­icat­ed him for schiz­o­phre­nia, while anoth­er had him invol­un­tar­i­ly retrained for five days before assert­ing that McPeters was fak­ing his illness.

According to prison records, McPeters has at var­i­ous times spread his feces on him­self and the walls, hoard­ed it for safe­keep­ing, soaked him­self in urine, and car­ried on con­ver­sa­tions with a wife and chil­dren who do not exist, and is tor­ment­ed by the inner voic­es of the rel­a­tives” of the woman he mur­dered. He was first declared incom­pe­tent in 2007 by U.S. District Judge Lawrence O’Neill, who at a sta­tus con­fer­ence six years lat­er said, We don’t have one scin­til­la of evi­dence … that he is any­thing but incompetent.” 

McPeters’ case high­lights a grow­ing prob­lem in California and across the nation. A Los Angeles Times inves­ti­ga­tion found 20 pris­on­ers, includ­ing McPeters, who had been diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia, psy­chosis, or para­noia, and California recent­ly became the first state to open a death row psy­chi­atric ward, which was full to capac­i­ty with­in a year. 

Similar men­tal health issues are present across the coun­try. In Texas, lawyers for death row pris­on­ers Randall Mays and Scott Panetti are rais­ing issues con­cern­ing the inad­e­quate treat­ment of men­tal health issues at tri­al and chal­leng­ing the com­pe­ten­cy of their para­noid psy­chot­ic clients to be exe­cut­ed. Lawyers for Robert Roberson, whom Texas intends to exe­cute June 21, have argued that the state vio­lat­ed his right to due process when it barred a defense expert from offer­ing tes­ti­mo­ny that a pre­ex­ist­ing trau­mat­ic brain injury so impaired Roberson’s men­tal capac­i­ty that his actions at the time of the mur­der were not inten­tion­al,” as that term is defined by law.

Citation Guide
Sources

P. St. John, On California’s death row, too insane to exe­cute, Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2016; P. St. John, Schizophrenia, psy­chosis and para­noia. Are these California death row inmates too insane to exe­cute?, Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2016; J. Silver, Issue of Mental Health Assessment a Focus as 3 Fight Death Sentences, The Texas Tribune, May 282016.