The Pennsylvania Supreme Court recent­ly ruled that the state can force two death row inmates to take anti-psy­chot­ic med­ica­tion so they are men­tal­ly com­pe­tent enough to pro­ceed with their appeals and be exe­cut­ed. The two inmates were sen­tenced to death but were found incom­pe­tent to par­tic­i­pate in the appeals filed on their behalf. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent inmates may not be exe­cut­ed. The Pennsylvania court over­turned low­er court deci­sions and direct­ed them ​“to order that appellee be admin­is­tered, invol­un­tar­i­ly if nec­es­sary, anti-psy­chot­ic med­ica­tion to ren­der him competent.” 

Justice Max Baer dis­sent­ed, say­ing, “[T]he gov­ern­men­tal inter­est in car­ry­ing out the sen­tences of death fails to out­weigh the vio­la­tion of [defen­dants’] Sam’s and Watson’s lib­er­ty inter­ests in not hav­ing psy­chi­atric med­ica­tion forced upon them.” In response to the opin­ion that the forced med­ica­tion was in the defen­dants’ best inter­ests so appeals could pro­ceed, he argued that each defen­dant, ​“has as much of an inter­est in avoid­ing an unwant­ed and forced drug­ging as he has in pur­su­ing col­lat­er­al relief.”
(E. Lounsberry, ​“Pa. High court Oks forced drug­ging of men­tal­ly ill death row inmates,” Philadelphia Examiner, July 22, 2008). See Mental Illness.

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