 |
| Scott Panetti |
December 3, 2014 A federal appeals court issued a
stay of execution Wednesday for Texas death-row inmate Scott Panetti, who was scheduled to be put to death later in the day.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most conservative in the country, stayed Panetti's execution "pending further order of the court to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter."
Panetti's case has drawn considerable attention and controversy in recent weeks, as mental health experts and death penalty opponents have said he is too mentally ill to be executed.
An unlikely coalition of conservatives, including former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and Baptist minister Pat Robertson, have pleaded with Texas Gov. Rick Perry to halt Panetti's execution, on grounds that "as conservatives, we must be on guard that such an extraordinary government sanction not be used against a person who is mentally incapable of rational thought."
Panetti's lawyers had also issued stay requests to the Supreme Court in order to review whether Panetti's mental state made him exempt from capital punishment under the Eighth Amendment's protection from cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court was widely expected to wait to render a decision until after 5th Circuit appeals had been exhausted.
Panetti was scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. central time. He was sentenced to death in 1995 for the double-murder of his then-wife's parents, but was diagnosed as a schizophrenic in 1978. His case appeared before the Supreme Court in 2007, which ruled at the time that criminals may not be sentenced to death if they lack the competency to understand why they are being executed.
Source: National Journal, December 3, 2014
Federal Appeals Court Issues Stay of Execution for Man with Severe Mental Illness
A federal appeals court has issued a stay of execution in Texas of a man with severe mental illness who was scheduled to be put to death this evening.
Scott Panetti, a 56-year-old man whose mental illness predated and contributed to the 1992 double murder for which he was sent to death row, was set to be executed soon after 6 p.m. local time on December 3. His mental illness affected his trial and continues to persist. He has spent nearly 20 years on death row.
"Any execution is a blight on the human rights record of the United States, and is especially egregious in light of Mr. Panetti's severe mental illness," said Steven W. Hawkins, executive director of Amnesty International USA. "We are grateful for the court's ruling putting a halt to tonight's execution. It is time to end this cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment once and for all. The United States cannot claim to be a leader in human rights while condemning its prisoners to death."
Panetti had already been hospitalized more than a dozen times with schizophrenia and other mental illness when, soon after the last of these hospitalizations in 1992, he shot and killed his parents-in-law.
As 5 U.S. Supreme Court justices noted in 2007, there is "much in the record to support the conclusion that [Panetti] suffers from severe delusions," and the federal judge to whom they remanded the case found that "Panetti is seriously mentally ill," and "was under the influence of this severe mental illness" at the time of his crime and when he represented himself at trial. The case was remanded back to the 5th Circuit, where it was determined the execution could go ahead.
Panetti insisted on acting as his own lawyer at his 1995 trial. During the proceedings he dressed as a cowboy and gave a rambling defense. Witnesses have variously described the trial as a "farce," a "joke," a "circus," and a "mockery."
According to his current lawyers, Panetti's mental illness persists to this day, as indicated in prison records. Lawyers have said that the condemned man reported "hearing voices," and claimed the prison authorities planted a "listening device" in his tooth and wanted him executed to shut him up "about the corruption" and to stop him from "preaching the Gospel."
Amnesty International USA opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception. As of today, 140 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. The U.S. was 1 of only 9 countries in the world that carried out executions each year between 2009 and 2013. Texas accounts for nearly 40 % of all executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977 under revised capital laws.
ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND
In a 5-4 ruling on 25 November, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) refused to issue a stay of execution, deciding it lacked jurisdiction over the appeal. 4 of the 9 judges dissented, arguing that what was "at stake in this case" meant that the court should review the appeal. Its failure to do so, they wrote, could result in "the irreversible and constitutionally impermissible execution of a mentally incompetent person."
In a 2nd ruling on November 26, this time 6-3, the TCCA refused to review the claim that imposing the death penalty on someone with severe mental illness "offends contemporary standards of decency" and therefore violated the Constitution. In a strong dissent, one of the judges said that he would grant the claim, adding that it was "inconceivable" to him "how the execution of a severely mentally ill person such as [Panetti] would measurably advance the retribution and deterrence purposes purportedly served by the death penalty." The 2 other dissenters said they would have blocked the execution so that the issue could be further considered.
Source: Amnesty International, December 4, 2014
Appeals Court Orders Texas To Hold Off On Execution Of Scott Panetti
Less than 12 hours before the state of Texas was set to execute Scott Panetti, an appeals court issued a stay Wednesday morning, meaning Panetti's lawyers will have another chance to argue that the death penalty is unconstitutional in their client's case.
Panetti, 56, is on death row for the 1992 murder of his in-laws, whom he killed while his wife and daughter were watching. He has suffered from schizophrenia and other mental illnesses for over 30 years and been hospitalized more than a dozen times.
The execution was scheduled for 6 p.m. CST Wednesday. Panetti's supporters have argued that his sentence should be commuted to life in prison because putting him to death would violate the Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment.
Now, Panetti's lawyers will have another opportunity to argue their case. As BuzzFeed reported, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of execution Wednesday morning "to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter." The court said it will be setting a schedule for oral arguments soon.
"We are grateful that the court stayed tonight's scheduled execution of Scott Panetti, a man who has suffered from schizophrenia for 3 decades, for a careful review of the issues surrounding his competency," said Gregory W. Wiercioch and Kathryn M. Kase, Panetti's attorneys, in a statement Wednesday.
"Mr. Panetti's illness, schizophrenia, was present for years prior to the crime, profoundly affected his trial, and appears to have worsened in recent years. Mr. Panetti has not had a competency evaluation in seven years, and we believe that today's ruling is the first step in a process which will clearly demonstrate that Mr. Panetti is too severely mentally ill to be executed," they added.
The Texas Tribune reported on Monday that Kase and Wiercioch had asked the circuit court to intervene in the case, in addition to going to the U.S. Supreme Court. But the strongest pressure has been on Gov. Rick Perry (R). Unlike in other states, the Texas governor can't single-handedly commute a prisoner's sentence. Perry could, however, have ordered Panetti's execution to be delayed for 30 days so that a new mental health assessment could be conducted.
Panetti's case has attracted support from mental health reform advocates and death penalty opponents, as well as from a number of well-known conservatives. Former Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli are among the conservatives who have been calling on Perry to step in.
Former Texas Gov. Mark White (D), who oversaw 19 executions while in office, has also said Panetti should not be killed.
"There are incredibly close and difficult calls that have to be made to either allow or prohibit the death penalty from being carried out," said White. "But Scott Panetti's plea for clemency is no such case. He is a severely mentally ill man. His trial was a sham. And executing Panetti would say far more about us than it would about the man we are attempting to kill."
During his trial, Panetti represented himself while wearing a purple cowboy costume. He tried to subpoena more than 200 witnesses, including John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ. Prosecutors have suggested that Panetti is faking his illness.
Wiercioch and Kase have been especially upset about the way they found out their client's execution date. A judge signed an order on Oct. 16 of this year that set Panetti's execution date for Dec. 3, but the district attorney never notified the lawyers that their client had been scheduled to be put to death. Instead, they learned about the pending execution on Oct. 30, through an article in the Houston Chronicle.
"14 days passed during which counsel could have been investigating the issues surrounding Mr. Panetti's competence -- issues which the District Attorney surely knew would have to be litigated to ensure that Mr. Panetti's execution would not violate the Eighth Amendment," Wiercioch and Kase wrote in a letter to Perry Monday, in which they requested a 30-day delay.
Source: Huffington Post, December 3, 2014
Mentally ill Texas inmate's execution stayed by federal appeals court
Justices from 5th circuit court of appeals puts execution of Scott Panetti, who is schizophrenic, on hold over 'complex legal questions'
A mentally ill death row inmate whose impending execution attracted international condemnation was granted a reprieve by a federal appeals court on Wednesday less than 8 hours before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection in the Texas state penitentiary.
The 5th circuit court issued a stay of Scott Panetti's execution so it could "fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue".
We are grateful that the court stayed tonight's scheduled execution of Scott Panetti," his attorneys, Greg Wiercioch and Kathryn Kase, said in a statement. "Mr Panetti has not had a competency evaluation in 7 years, and we believe that today's ruling is the 1st step in a process which will clearly demonstrate that Mr Panetti is too severely mentally ill to be executed."
Panetti shot dead Joe and Amanda Alvarado, the parents of his estranged wife, Sonja, in front of her and their 3-year-old daughter in the Texas hill country in 1992.
As Panetti's execution date approached his case gained widespread attention and a number of evangelical Christians, mental health groups, legal figures and prominent conservatives called for the sentence to be commuted, along with 2 United Nations human rights experts.
After discovering through a media report at the end of October that an execution date had been set, the 56-year-old's attorneys launched a series of petitions asking state and federal courts to remove him from death row or at the least to afford them more time and allocate funds to hold a fresh competency hearing. They said that his mental health had deteriorated since his previous competency hearing in 2007.
They also argued that executing someone as delusional as Panetti would serve no useful retributive or deterrent purpose and would violate the constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual" punishments.
The Wisconsin-born US navy veteran had been admitted to hospitals more than a dozen times for a variety of mental health problems since first being diagnosed with schizophrenia aged 20 in 1978. In 1986 his 1st wife sought to have him committed to hospital after he tried to "exorcise the devil" from their house by burying furniture in the back yard and nailing the curtains closed.
At his 1995 trial he was allowed to represent himself and tried to call Jesus, John F Kennedy, the Pope and Anne Bancroft as witnesses. He dressed in a purple cowboy suit in court and often rambled incoherently and on irrelevant topics such as Native Americans and the death of his dog. He said the killings were perpetrated by an alter ego known as "Sarge" and mounted an insanity defence despite calling veterinarians to the stand rather than mental health experts.
Over nearly 2 decades a variety of state and federal courts agreed that he is seriously mentally ill yet found him competent to be executed on the basis that he has a factual and rational understanding of the relationship between his crime and his punishment. That is the legal standard set out by the supreme court in a 2007 judgment known as Panetti v Quarterman.
His pro bono attorneys challenged that interpretation, saying that he had a fixed delusion that Texas prison officials hatched a satanic plot to kill him in order to stop him preaching Christianity.
Source: The Guardian, December 3, 2014
