Texas Death Row Prisoner Andre Thomas Too Mentally Ill to Attend His Own Competency Hearing, Doctor Warns

A March 9, 2026, com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing for Andre Thomas, a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er in Texas, has been post­poned to an unspec­i­fied date because of con­cerns that Mr. Thomas is too men­tal­ly ill to be trans­port­ed to his com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing and he could not be re-exam­ined by the State’s expert. Mr. Thomas was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in April 2023; how­ev­er, his exe­cu­tion date was with­drawn in March 2023, cit­ing con­cerns with his severe men­tal ill­ness (SMI) and com­pe­ten­cy to face execution.

“In my thir­ty year career prac­tic­ing as a triple-board cer­ti­fied gen­er­al, child and ado­les­cent, cor­rec­tion­al, and foren­sic psy­chi­a­trist across mul­ti­ple types of cor­rec­tion­al, foren­sic units, state hos­pi­tals, and the like, Mr. Thomas is one of the most treat­ment resistant/​refractory, and com­pli­cat­ed patients that I have ever eval­u­at­ed, con­sult­ed on, or treated.” — Dr. Joseph V. Penn, the Director of Mental Health Services at the University of Texas Medical Branch, on his patient Andre Thomas in a let­ter to Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Dr. Joseph V. Penn, the Director of Mental Health Services at the University of Texas Medical Branch, who man­ages care for the most men­tal­ly ill pris­on­ers held at the Wayne Scott Unit where Mr. Thomas is housed, penned a let­ter filed with the 15th Judicial District of Grayson County not­ing ​“Mr. Thomas is one of the most treat­ment resistant/​refractory, and com­pli­cat­ed patients [he has] eval­u­at­ed, con­sult­ed on, or treat­ed.” He fur­ther explains in his let­ter that Wayne Scott behav­ioral health staff and Mr. Thomas’ treat­ment team have raised sev­er­al con­cerns with trans­port­ing him more than five and a half hours for his hear­ing to a small coun­ty jail that may not be equipped to han­dle his medical needs.

With an exten­sive his­to­ry of schizoaf­fec­tive dis­or­der, includ­ing hal­lu­ci­na­tions and para­noid delu­sion, Mr. Thomas requires a strict­ly mon­i­tored med­ica­tion reg­i­men. “[D]espite his cur­rent antipsy­chot­ic and oth­er psy­chotrop­ic med­ica­tion treat­ment reg­i­men, he still has grandiose and para­noid delu­sions. He con­tin­ues to inter­mit­tent­ly strug­gle with psy­chot­ic symp­toms, and he remains clin­i­cal­ly frag­ile and at risk to decom­pen­sate,” wrote Dr. Penn. Because of this, members of Mr. Thomas’ treat­ment team have ​“seri­ous con­cerns regard­ing the immi­nent risks of addi­tion­al seri­ous self-harm, harm to self and oth­ers, impul­siv­i­ty, and the risks of psy­chot­ic dete­ri­o­ra­tion” posed by long-term trans­porta­tion. Wayne Scott staff ​“have also raised con­cerns regard­ing the stres­sors of being moved to a new and unfa­mil­iar loca­tion with unknown new staff and a new phys­i­cal plant” not­ing that ​“sounds and oth­er sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences (due to being legal­ly blind) that he is not famil­iar with could cer­tain­ly exac­er­bate his frag­ile psychotic illness.”

In a lengthy July 2024 eval­u­a­tion of Mr. Thomas, Dr. George Corvin, a court-appoint­ed psy­chi­a­trist, reviewed exten­sive records relat­ed to his men­tal health and legal records and found ​“com­pelling” evi­dence that Mr. Thomas is not com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed under legal stan­dards. Ford v. Wainwright (1986) held the Eighth Amendment bars the exe­cu­tion of the insane and reit­er­at­ed that defen­dants are enti­tled to a com­pe­ten­cy eval­u­a­tion and hear­ing to assess the ques­tion of their com­pe­ten­cy. A lat­er rul­ing in Panetti v. Quarterman (2007) estab­lished that a pris­on­er must have a ​“ratio­nal under­stand­ing” of the state’s rea­son for exe­cu­tion and the con­nec­tion between their crime and pun­ish­ment. ​“Mr. Thomas is suf­fer­ing from active psy­chot­ic symp­toms of a pri­ma­ry psy­chot­ic dis­or­der (Schizophrenia), and [] the nature of these symp­toms direct­ly impacts his abil­i­ty to ratio­nal­ly com­pre­hend his legal sit­u­a­tion, and in par­tic­u­lar, leave him unable to ratio­nal­ly under­stand not only his pro­posed exe­cu­tion, but the real­i­ty of his exe­cu­tion. As such, the under­signed views him as lack­ing the com­pe­ten­cy to be exe­cut­ed,” wrote Dr. Corvin.

According to Dr. Corvin’s eval­u­a­tion, Mr. Thomas suf­fers from a num­ber of seri­ous delu­sions. Dr. Corvin notes that while Mr. Thomas can artic­u­late the government’s stat­ed rea­son for his exe­cu­tion, he does not believe that is the real rea­son. Mr. Thomas also believes that gov­ern­ment attempts to exe­cute him would not suc­ceed. Dr. Corvin wrote ​“Mr. Thomas delu­sion­al­ly believes that the gov­ern­ment would most like­ly be unsuc­cess­ful if they were to try to exe­cute him, such that if his heart were to stop, it would imme­di­ate­ly start again, he would get up off the gur­ney in a dif­fer­ent form.” Dr. Corvin has also not­ed that Mr. Thomas ​“believes his heart­beat is con­nect­ed to nuclear war­head codes such that if his heart were to stop beat­ing even tem­porar­i­ly, the nuclear war­head would explode trig­ger­ing the End Days.”

Mr. Thomas was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2005 for the mur­der of his estranged wife, their son, and his wife’s daugh­ter. Since child­hood, Mr. Thomas has suf­fered from schiz­o­phre­nia. He began hear­ing voic­es and drink­ing alco­hol at age 9 and first attempt­ed sui­cide at age 10. He has a long fam­i­ly his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness and in 2004, two days before the mur­ders, Mr. Thomas attempt­ed sui­cide and was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal, where a doc­tor deter­mined he was para­noid, expe­ri­enc­ing hal­lu­ci­na­tions, and ​“real­ly men­tal­ly ill.” In the three weeks lead­ing up the mur­ders, Mr. Thomas attempt­ed sui­cide a total of three times. Left unsu­per­vised, Mr. Thomas walked out of the hos­pi­tal; the hos­pi­tal issued an emer­gency deten­tion order, which direct­ed law enforce­ment to appre­hend Mr. Thomas. Law enforce­ment did not act on this directive.

Driven by reli­gious delu­sions and hal­lu­ci­na­tions, Mr. Thomas killed his wife and her two chil­dren and again attempt­ed to take his own life by stab­bing him­self in the chest. He turned him­self into police when he real­ized he was not dying. Less than a week after the mur­ders, while in jail, Mr. Thomas gouged out his right eye, fol­low­ing the lit­er­al dic­tates of Mathew 5:29. Years lat­er, while on death row, Mr. Thomas would gouge out and eat his left eye whole because he did not want the gov­ern­ment to read his thoughts through his eye.

When Mr. Thomas was sen­tenced to death in 2005, his jury did not hear his long his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness and efforts to get help, includ­ing the three sui­cide attempts in the weeks lead­ing up to the crime, nor did they hear about the deten­tion order from the hos­pi­tal. After rip­ping out his right eye, Mr. Thomas was declared incom­pe­tent to stand tri­al. Less than two months lat­er, doc­tors declared him com­pe­tent and he was returned to Grayson County for tri­al. His defense attor­neys did not raise the ques­tion of his com­pe­tence again before the start of tri­al. Mr. Thomas plead­ed guilty by rea­son of insan­i­ty and two court-appoint­ed doc­tors found that Mr. Thomas was a para­noid schiz­o­phrenic, and psy­chot­ic when he car­ried out the crime. Prosecutors agreed with this find­ing, but argued his psy­chosis was vol­un­tar­i­ly induced before the killings by ingest­ing cough med­i­cine. Mr. Thomas’ defense coun­sel did not present evi­dence of his longstanding audi­to­ry and visu­al hal­lu­ci­na­tions, allow­ing the state’s argu­ment to prevail.

Mr. Thomas’ April 2023 exe­cu­tion date had been set just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a chal­lenge to his con­vic­tion based on evi­dence of jurors’ racial bias. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dis­sent­ed from the Court’s denial of review. Justice Sotomayor wrote in the dis­sent that courts must ​“safe­guard the fair­ness of crim­i­nal tri­als by ensur­ing that jurors do not har­bor, or at the very least could put aside, racial­ly biased sen­ti­ments.” The jury that con­vict­ed Mr. Thomas, a Black man, was all-white and three jurors open­ly expressed racial bias on their jury ques­tion­naires, stat­ing their dis­agree­ment with inter­ra­cial mar­riage and chil­dren — facts direct­ly per­ti­nent to Mr. Thomas and the crime in ques­tion. Mr. Thomas’ tri­al coun­sel did not chal­lenge the inclu­sion of these jurors and did not object to the prosecutor’s use of racial­ly inflam­ma­to­ry com­ments. In her dis­sent, Justice Sotomayor wrote, ​“The errors in this case ren­der Thomas’ death sen­tence not only unre­li­able, but unconstitutional.”

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Hayley Bedard, March 12, 2026

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but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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