The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit says that ​“Adam Kelly Ward (pic­tured) has been afflict­ed with men­tal ill­ness his entire life.” Yet Texas will exe­cute him on March 22 unless the U.S. Supreme Court grants him a stay to review his case. Ward’s lawyers argue that the exe­cu­tion of a per­son who is severe­ly men­tal­ly ill con­sti­tutes cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment and that, for that rea­son, Ward should not be exe­cut­ed. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied review of that issue on March 14, say­ing that Ward should have raised it in pre­vi­ous state-court appeals. The Texas fed­er­al courts reject­ed a sim­i­lar argu­ment in 2015. While the U.S. Supreme Court has barred the exe­cu­tion of inmates who are so men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent that that they do not ratio­nal­ly com­pre­hend that they are going to be exe­cut­ed or why, it has nev­er ruled that exe­cut­ing inmates with severe men­tal ill­ness is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Ward has con­sis­tent­ly exhib­it­ed signs of severe men­tal ill­ness since infan­cy, and was twice hos­pi­tal­ized for mul­ti-week peri­ods because of his ill­ness. He suf­fered from uncon­trol­lable rage episodes and two of his ele­men­tary schools built spe­cial padded iso­la­tion rooms in which he would be placed when he was out of con­trol. The fed­er­al dis­trict court described him as delu­sion­al and hav­ing ​“dif­fi­cul­ty with impulse con­trol, bad judg­ment, poor insight, trou­ble sleep­ing and eat­ing, mood swings, and bizarre behav­iors.” At tri­al, a psy­chi­a­trist tes­ti­fied that Ward’s psy­chot­ic dis­or­der caused him to ​“suf­fer para­noid delu­sions such that he believes there might be a con­spir­a­cy against him and that peo­ple might be after him or try­ing to harm him” and the fed­er­al dis­trict court agreed that as a result of his men­tal ill­ness, Ward ​“inter­pret­ed neu­tral things as a threat or per­son­al attack.” In her state­ment con­cur­ring with the state court’s denial of a stay of exe­cu­tion, Judge Elsa Alcala not­ed that no Supreme Court deci­sion banned the exe­cu­tion of peo­ple with men­tal ill­ness and that the pow­er to do so rests with leg­is­la­tures: ​“As is the case with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, the pre­ferred course would be for leg­is­la­tures rather than courts to set stan­dards defin­ing the lev­el at which a men­tal ill­ness is so severe that it should result in a defen­dant being cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly exempt from the death penalty.” 

If Ward is exe­cut­ed, he will be the fifth per­son exe­cut­ed in Texas and ninth in the U.S. in 2016.

(J. McCullough, ​“Execution Set For Man Courts Recognize as Mentally Ill,” Texas Tribune, March 22, 2016; M. Graczyk, ​“HIGH COURT WEIGHS WHETHER TO SPARE TEXAS MAN FROM EXECUTION,” Associated Press, March 22, 2016.) Read the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals March 14, 2016 deci­sion deny­ing a stay of exe­cu­tion here, along with the con­cur­ring state­ments of Judges Alcala and Newell. See Mental Illness.

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