On October 12, Judge David Glant (state Circuit Court) reject­ed a request from attor­neys for Florida death row inmate John Ferguson (pic­tured) to halt his exe­cu­tion, despite acknowl­edg­ing that Ferguson has severe men­tal ill­ness. The judge wrote that Ferguson’s ​“doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia” was ​“cred­i­ble and com­pelling,” and that ​“it is incon­ceiv­able” that Ferguson would have received all those years of psy­chotrop­ic med­ica­tions and clin­i­cal treat­ment ​“were he not a diag­nosed para­noid schiz­o­phrenic.” However, Judge Glant reject­ed Ferguson’s request for a stay of exe­cu­tion because, “[r]egardless of his long his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness, there is no evi­dence that he does not under­stand what is tak­ing place and why it is tak­ing place.” As ear­ly as 1965, court records indi­cat­ed that Ferguson was hav­ing ​“visu­al hal­lu­ci­na­tions.” One doc­tor said Ferguson ​“did not know right from wrong nor the nature and con­se­quences of his acts.” A psy­cho­log­i­cal diag­no­sis in 1975 warned that Ferguson ​“has a long-stand­ing, severe ill­ness which will most like­ly require long-term inpa­tient hos­pi­tal­iza­tion” and that he was ​“dan­ger­ous and can­not be released under any cir­cum­stances.” Ferguson was released the fol­low­ing year and com­mit­ted a series of mur­ders. Now, 35 years lat­er, he is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on October 18. UPDATE: A new exe­cu­tion date has been set for Oct. 23, fol­low­ing the Florida Supreme Court’s denial of Ferguson’s appeal. UPDATE: The Oct. 23 exe­cu­tion date has been stayed to allow for a habeas cor­pus hear­ing on Oct. 26.

Christopher Handsman, Ferguson’s attor­ney, said, ​“It is impos­si­ble to fath­om that the State can con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly put to death a man who thinks he is the Prince of God and who believes he has a des­tiny of being the right hand of God and return­ing to puri­fy earth after the State tries to kill him. That sim­ply is not a ratio­nal appre­ci­a­tion for what’s about to befall him. We are con­fi­dent that either the Florida Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court will pre­vent this uncon­sti­tu­tion­al exe­cu­tion from going forward.”

(F. Grimm, ​“Nothing good about exe­cu­tion of men­tal­ly ill man,” Miami Herald, October 13, 2012). See Mental Illness and DPIC’s pod­cast on Mental Illness. See also N.Y. Times edi­to­r­i­al, ​“A Schizophrenic on Death Row,” Oct. 18, 2012.

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