Lawyers for James Frazier (pic­tured), Ohio​’s old­est death-row pris­on­er, have filed a motion to pre­vent his exe­cu­tion, argu­ing that he has severe vas­cu­lar demen­tia that has ren­dered him unable to under­stand his punishment. 

Legal papers filed in the Lucas County Court of Common Pleas in October 2020 assert that Frazier, now 79 years old, suf­fered a series of mini-strokes in 2017 that have caused seri­ous phys­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal, and cog­ni­tive impair­ments that make him incom­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed. His lawyers say that he suf­fers from para­noia, incon­ti­nence, and con­fu­sion, believes the year is 1990, and thinks he is still awaiting trial. 

“Mr. Frazier’s con­cept of real­i­ty is so impaired that he can­not grasp the execution’s mean­ing and pur­pose or the link between the crime and his pun­ish­ment – not now and not ever,” his lawyer, Sharon Hicks, wrote. 

A men­tal health report by Dr. Bhushan Agharkar, a psy­chi­a­trist who exam­ined Frazier over the course of two years, stat­ed that ​“Mr. Frazier is unable to ratio­nal­ly assist his coun­sel with his case because his dete­ri­o­rat­ing brain dis­ease impairs his mem­o­ry, abil­i­ty to weigh and delib­er­ate options and main­tain a coher­ent con­ver­sa­tion when dis­cussing his case. He is eas­i­ly con­fused and appears para­noid, the result of his demen­tia.” Frazier, the report says, ​“is clear­ly dement­ed and lacks a ratio­nal under­stand­ing of his death sen­tence and why the state wants to execute him.” 

In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Ford v. Wainwright that the con­sti­tu­tion pro­hibits states from exe­cut­ing indi­vid­u­als who lack a ratio­nal under­stand­ing of the fact that they will be exe­cut­ed or the rea­sons for their exe­cu­tion. In 2019, in Madison v. Alabama, the Supreme Court said that deci­sion applied to cas­es in which the prisoner’s cog­ni­tive impair­ment was a prod­uct of dementia.

Rick Halperin, the direc­tor of the Embrey Human Rights Program at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, called Frazier’s case ​“very unusu­al,” but not­ed, ​“It will become a prob­lem, though, as death row is aging. You don’t see many states that are active­ly try­ing to exe­cute peo­ple in their 70s.” About a quar­ter of the peo­ple on U.S. death rows are age 60 or old­er, and the num­ber has grown dra­mat­i­cal­ly in recent years. In 2007, just 5.8% of those on death row were at least 60 years old. The per­cent­age more than dou­bled to 12.2% in 2013 and dou­bled again by 2020. 

The aging of the death row pop­u­la­tion has increas­ing­ly raised ques­tions about how to han­dle the phys­i­cal and men­tal decline that can come from the com­bi­na­tion of old age, oppres­sive phys­i­cal con­di­tions, and the extreme stress of fac­ing exe­cu­tion. Wesley Purkey, who was exe­cut­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in July 2020, had also been diag­nosed with demen­tia. His attor­neys attempt­ed to halt his exe­cu­tion, but the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to pro­ceed with­out a hear­ing on his mental status.

James Frazier cur­rent­ly has an exe­cu­tion date of October 20, 2021, but Ohio has not per­formed an exe­cu­tion since July 2018. Executions are on hold in the state because of prob­lems with the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col and the unavail­abil­i­ty of lethal-injection drugs.

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Sources

John Caniglia, Dementia on death row: Attorneys cite Ohio inmate’s ill­ness in attempt to set aside sched­uled exe­cu­tion, Cleveland Plain Dealer/Cleveland.com, November 6, 2020.