May 10, 2004: Austin American-Statesman

Finding jus­tice for men­tal­ly ill defen­dants

There is lit­tle doubt that Texas will exe­cute Kelsey Patterson on May 18 if left to its own devices. Neither is there doubt that Patterson is guilty of mur­der­ing two East Texans. Even so, this case nev­er should have reached this point, giv­en that Patterson is severe­ly men­tal­ly ill.

In 1992, Patterson was wan­der­ing the streets with a hand gun when he hap­pened upon Louis Oates, a Palestine busi­ness­man, and fatal­ly shot him. When Oates’ sec­re­tary ran out from the office, Patterson also killed her. Patterson, who lived in the same town, bare­ly knew them. Following the shoot­ings, he walked back to his near­by home, stripped to his socks and walked naked in the streets until police arrived. Prosecutors have yet to estab­lish a motive in the dou­ble homi­cide.

Patterson was in and out of state men­tal hos­pi­tals dur­ing the 1980s fol­low­ing ran­dom acts of vio­lence linked to schiz­o­phre­nia when he failed to take his med­ica­tion. He was released after being sub­dued with med­ica­tion and treat­ment. The sys­tem would restart. His case reveals anew a deep breach in the jus­tice sys­tem and a break­down in the state’s men­tal health sys­tem. After the first relapse, Patterson should have been com­mit­ted long term, or at the min­i­mum, been watched close­ly.

Patterson’s claim of being a para­noid schiz­o­phrenic is not a ruse. The his­to­ry and evi­dence of his men­tal ill­ness is so com­pelling that it trou­bled one of the most con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

​“What are we doing here?” Judge Edith Jones asked Assistant Attorney General Gina Bunn, who defend­ed the state’s deci­sion to exe­cute Patterson before a pan­el of the fed­er­al court. ​“This is a very sick man.“

The cycle of vio­lence exhib­it­ed in Patterson’s case is all too famil­iar. We recent­ly heard the trag­ic sto­ry of a Beaumont man, Kenneth Lee Pierott, charged with mur­der in the asphyx­i­a­tion of a 6‑year-old boy in an oven, six years after a jury found the Pierott inno­cent by rea­son of insan­i­ty of beat­ing his dis­abled sis­ter to death. Deanna Laney, a Tyler moth­er, was found inno­cent of mur­der­ing two of her three chil­dren because she was insane. And there is the case of University of Texas grad­u­ate stu­dent Jackson Ngai, who is accused of using a meat cleaver to kill a UT pro­fes­sor. Ngai told police he was try­ing to remove a com­put­er chip from her brain.

Obviously, the sys­tem is fail­ing. A leg­isla­tive com­mit­tee is study­ing whether to revise Texas law so that a jury could find such peo­ple guilty but insane, allow­ing severe­ly men­tal­ly ill peo­ple to be close­ly super­vised and treat­ed in secure set­tings. That won’t sat­is­fy every­one. But it is sure­ly bet­ter than exe­cut­ing men­tal­ly ill peo­ple who repeat­ed­ly com­mit vio­lent crimes or lock­ing them away in reg­u­lar pris­ons with­out ade­quate treat­ment.

In Patterson’s case, lawyers are scram­bling to win an appeal, or at least a stay, assert­ing that Patterson is legal­ly incom­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed. He was found to be sane at the time of his 1992 crime by an East Texas court that sen­tenced him to death.

Patterson believes that a for­eign device, implant­ed in his body, is being used by evil forces to con­trol him and do him harm. The con­spir­a­cy against him takes the form of the ​“hell pledge” inscribed in a secret book. And near­ly every­one, from the judges and doc­tors affil­i­at­ed with his case to the lawyers who rep­re­sent him, are ​“hell work­ers.“

Patterson believes their pur­pose is to car­ry out the pledge against him, and con­se­quent­ly, has refused to coop­er­ate with men­tal health experts and his lawyers.

His fate now rests with fed­er­al courts. It’s clear that exe­cut­ing him won’t resolve the issue of how to pro­tect soci­ety from severe­ly men­tal­ly ill peo­ple who turn vio­lent. That is an issue for the Legislature.