A recent arti­cle in Mother Jones exam­ines lin­ger­ing ques­tions in the deter­mi­na­tion of which inmates are exempt from exe­cu­tion because of mental incompetency. 

In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Ford v. Wainwright that a per­son could not be exe­cut­ed if he or she was ​“unaware of the pun­ish­ment they’re about to suf­fer and why they are to suf­fer it.” The 2007 rul­ing in Panetti v. Quarterman updat­ed that deci­sion, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writ­ing, ​“A pris­on­er’s aware­ness of the State’s ratio­nale for an exe­cu­tion is not the same as a ratio­nal under­stand­ing of it.” 

Scott Panetti (pic­tured), the inmate involved in the 2007 case, knew that the state of Texas planned to exe­cute him for the mur­der of his in-laws, but also sin­cere­ly believed that he was at the cen­ter of a strug­gle between God and Satan and was being exe­cut­ed to stop him from preach­ing the Gospel. Even after the case with his name was decid­ed, Panetti remained on death row, and the Texas courts found him com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed based upon the tes­ti­mo­ny of a sin­gle psy­chi­a­trist who claimed Panetti was fak­ing his men­tal ill­ness. Panetti came with­in hours of exe­cu­tion on December 3, 2014, before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit issued a stay. 

In Missouri, Cecil Clayton — a brain-dam­aged man with an IQ of 71 — was exe­cut­ed on March 17, 2015 with­out a hear­ing to deter­mine his competency. 

By con­trast, a recent men­tal com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing for Indiana inmate Michael Overstreet includ­ed four days of tes­ti­mo­ny from 13 wit­ness­es and near­ly 1,300 pages of med­ical records. In a 137-page opin­ion, the state judge con­clud­ed, ​“Delusions or oth­er psy­chot­ic symp­toms can­not sim­ply be dis­count­ed because a peti­tion­er has a cog­ni­tive aware­ness of his cir­cum­stances.” Indiana’s Attorney General said that the deci­sion adhered so well to the Panetti rul­ing that there was noth­ing for the state to appeal.

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Sources

S. Mencimer, ​“Executing the Insane Is Against the Law of the Land. So Why Do We Keep Doing It?,” Mother Jones, March/​April 2015.

See Mental Illness and U.S. Supreme Court.