Entries tagged with “Michael Overstreet”
Issues
Mar 26, 2015
States Struggle with Determinations of Competency to Be Executed
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…