MENTAL ILLNESS: Texas Inmate Gouges Out Eyes, Remains on Death Row

Texas death-row inmate Andre Thomas has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and auditory hallucinations drove him to gouge out both of his eyes. Nevertheless, prosecutors still believe he should be executed.

In a revealing recent essay in Mother Jones magazine, author Marc Bookman described in vivid detail Thomas’s family history of mental illness, substance abuse, and domestic violence going back at least two generations.

A brief excerpt from the article epitomized Thomas’s delusions: “On July 14, 2008, Andre managed to procure something sharp and slash a seven-centimeter gash in his throat, requiring eight stitches. He insisted that he was the cause of all the problems in the world, and that if he killed himself all the problems would stop. The next day, he reported that he had been reading his Bible and got confused because he wasn’t sure if it was the voices or his own thoughts that were telling him to kill himself. During a psychiatric assessment one week later, he explained that ‘The government is conspiring to read my mind. That’s why I ripped out my right eye. That’s the righteous side. They can’t hear my thoughts no more. I cut my throat. Gotta shed a little blood to save the world.’”

In the three weeks before he killed his wife and two children, police were asked to apprehend him and bring him to a mental hospital on two separate occasions. After Thomas removed his second eye, he was moved to a facility for mentally ill prisoners, but the state continues to pursue his execution.

In addition to the issue of mental illness, Thomas’s trial was tainted with racial problems: 4 of the 12 jurors expressed disapproval of interracial marriage (Thomas is black, his wife was white), and his trial jury was 100% white.