'Floridly psychotic' Texas inmate's storied history of mental illness likely won't halt his execution

Scott Panetti

Barring the success of last-minute appeals, Scott Panetti, 56, will be executed on 3 December despite clear evidence that he is insane and his original trial was a farce

On Tuesday, the Texas court of criminal appeals, by a 5-4 vote, denied the attorneys’ latest petition for a stay of execution. Panetti’s lawyers had argued that executing a severely mentally ill inmate would violate the eighth and fourteenth amendments and cited new research showing that death sentences are rarely imposed on the mentally-ill and that no “guilty but mentally ill” capital defendant has been sentenced to death in 20 years. As a result of this national consensus, they argued, it would be unconstitutional to impose a punishment that “offends contemporary standards of decency” and as unreasonable to execute the mentally ill as it would be to put to death the intellectually disabled.

Earlier this month, the attorneys sent a petition for clemency to Texas governor Rick Perry and the Texas board of pardons and paroles (PDF). The appeal describes Panetti as “floridly psychotic” and calls his case a “judicial disaster” where “evidence of his incompetency runs like a fissure through every proceeding”. They are awaiting responses.

A Wisconsin-born US Navy veteran, Panetti was first diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1978, when he was 20. In the 1980s and early 90s he was hospitalised more than a dozen times for mental illnesses including hallucinations and paranoid delusions. His first wife told hospital workers that he was obsessed with exorcising the devil from his house, a process that involved burying furniture in his yard and nailing the curtains shut. He and Sonja Alvarado had separated about a month before he murdered her parents. She had taken out a protective order against him less than a week before his rampage.

A jury at a competency hearing was unable to decide if he was fit to stand trial, but a different jury at a second hearing decided that he could. Panetti rejected a plea offer of a life sentence and chose to represent himself at his trial in 1995, evidently because of a suspicion of attorneys.

Off medication after experiencing some sort of religious epiphany, at trial he dressed in a purple cowboy suit, made a threatening gesture at the jury and tried to subpoena Jesus, the Pope, John F Kennedy and the actor Anne Bancroft.

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Source: The Guardian, November 25, 2014

Florida executes Michael Tanzi

Florida on Tuesday executed a death row inmate described by one local detective as a "fledgling serial killer" for the murder of a beloved Miami Herald employee. Florida executed Michael Tanzi on Tuesday, 25 years after the murder of beloved Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta, who was attacked in broad daylight on her lunch break in 2000. Michael Tanzi, 48, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford and pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET.

South Carolina | Man who ambushed off-duty cop to face firing squad in second execution of its kind

Mikal Mahdi, 48, who was found guilty of killing an off-duty police officer and a convenience store worker, is the second inmate scheduled to executed by South Carolina's new firing squad A murderer who ambushed and shot an off duty police officer eight times before burning his body in a killing spree is set to become the second person to die by firing squad. South Carolina's highest court has rejected the last major appeal from Mikal Mahdi, 41, who is to be put to death with three bullets to the heart at 6pm on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Mahdi's lawyers said his original lawyers put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that didn't call on relatives, teachers or people who knew him and ignored the impact of weeks spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.

Afghanistan | Four men publicly executed by Taliban with relatives of victims shooting them 'six or seven times' at sport stadium

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South Carolina executes Mikal Mahdi

Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers A man facing the death penalty for committing two murders was executed by firing squad on Friday, the second such execution in the US state of South Carolina this year. Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers, an off-duty police officer, and the murder of a convenience store employee three days earlier. According to a statement from the prison, "the execution was performed by a three-person firing squad at 6:01 pm (2201 GMT)," with Mahdi pronounced dead four minutes later.

Lethal Injection, Electric Chair, or Firing Squad? An Inhumane Decision for Death Row Prisoners

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USA | Why the firing squad may be making a comeback

South Carolina plans to execute Mikal Mahdi on Friday for the murder of a police officer, draping a hood over his head and firing three bullets into his heart. The choice to die by firing squad – rather than lethal injection or the electric chair – was Mahdi’s own, his attorney said last month: “Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils.” If it proceeds, Mahdi’s execution would be the latest in a recent string of events that have put the spotlight on the firing squad as a handful of US death penalty states explore alternatives to lethal injection, by far the nation’s dominant execution method.

I spent 16 years in solitary in South Carolina. This is what it did to me. | Opinion

South Carolinian Randy Poindexter writes about the effects 16 years of solitary confinement had on him ahead of South Carolina’s planned execution of Mikal Mahdi , who spent months in solitary as a young man. For 16 years, I lived in a concrete cell. Twenty-three hours a day, every day, for more than 3,000 days, South Carolina kept me in solitary confinement. I was a young man before I was sent to solitary — angry, untreated and unwell. I made mistakes. But I wasn’t sentenced to madness. That’s what solitary did to me. My mental health worsened with each passing day. At first, paranoia and depression set in. Then, hallucinations and self-mutilation. I talked to people who weren’t there. I cut myself to feel something besides despair. I could do nothing as four of my friends and fellow prisoners took their own lives rather than endure another day of torturous isolation.

Louisiana | Lawyers of Jessie Hoffman speak about their final moments before execution

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Arizona | The cruelty of isolation: There’s nothing ‘humane’ about how we treat the condemned

On March 19, I served as a witness to the execution of a man named Aaron Gunches, Arizona’s first since 2022. During his time on death row, he begged for death and was ultimately granted what is likely more appropriately described as an emotionless state-assisted suicide. This experience has profoundly impacted me, leading to deep reflection on the nature of death, humanity, and the role we play in our final moments. When someone is in the end stages of life, we talk about hospice care, comfort, care, easing suffering and humane death. We strive for a “good death” — a peaceful transition. I’ve seen good ones, and I’ve seen bad, unplanned ones.

'No Warning': The Death Penalty In Japan

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite criticism over how it is carried out. Tokyo: Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation this week following his acquittal last year in a retrial. Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out.

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