Washington Post

EDITORIAL

IF THE STATE of Georgia has its way, Alexander Williams IV will soon be dead. Mr. Williams raped and mur­dered a teenage girl in 1986; his guilt is not seri­ous­ly in doubt. Yet his exe­cu­tion would be bar­barous. The rea­son is not just that Mr. Williams was 17 at the time of his crime, though the juve­nile death penal­ty is a blight that should be end­ed. Mr. Williams also, in the words of prison doc­tors, suf­fers from ​“chron­ic para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia,” and prison offi­cials are autho­rized to forcibly med­icate him with anti-psy­chot­ic drugs. The Supreme Court has for­bid­den the exe­cu­tion of those so men­tal­ly ill that they do not under­stand what is hap­pen­ing to them or why. So the Williams case rais­es the ques­tion of whether Georgia may treat an inmate to restore com­pe­ten­cy, in order then to kill him. To pose such a stom­ach-turn­ing ques­tion is to answer it.

Mr. Williams did not plead insan­i­ty at his tri­al. But his symp­toms, it seems, have wors­ened since — not sur­pris­ing giv­en that schiz­o­phre­nia often devel­ops in ear­ly adult­hood. His lawyers, cit­ing prison records from through­out his years on death row, con­tend that he believes actress Sigourney Weaver is God and that he ​“sees lit­tle red men in peo­ple’s eyes, and green frogs that do not exist. He sleeps on the floor so as to be clos­er to the frogs.… He says that rats have been ​‘beamed into’ his cell.” The state does not con­cede the extent of Mr. Williams’s impair­ment, con­tend­ing instead that the mat­ter has nev­er been raised in the appro­pri­ate forum. But it appar­ent­ly does take his delu­sions seri­ous­ly enough to forcibly inject him with drugs if he does not take them willingly.

At the very least, a court should con­sid­er the evi­dence of Mr. Williams’s cur­rent men­tal state and deter­mine whether his exe­cu­tion would offend the Constitution. No court has yet done so. Ultimately, the Supreme Court should make clear that states may not treat men­tal ill­ness in order to pave the road to the death cham­ber. The court faced this ques­tion once before, and it punt­ed. It should not do so again. Nor should the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles turn away. If there is any role for exec­u­tive clemen­cy, sure­ly spar­ing the men­tal­ly ill from the full wrath of crim­i­nal law is among the more com­pelling. The board yes­ter­day tem­porar­i­ly stayed the exe­cu­tion, which would oth­er­wise have tak­en place today, to con­sid­er the mat­ter fur­ther. Here’s hop­ing some­one has the decen­cy to stop it altogether.