Death Penalty News

Texas prison officials will attempt to execute their 1st death row inmate of 2026 next week. Charles Thompson, who was convicted of killing his former girlfriend, Glenda Dennise Hayslip, and her companion, Darren Cain, in April of 1998, is scheduled to die on Jan. 28.  An attorney representing Thompson has not replied to questions from the Chronicle about the efforts he will make to try to save Thompson’s life. As of press time, no appeal on the inmate’s behalf has been filed with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. 

Passing a law that permit a court to declare someone like Scott Panetti permanently incompetent would allow the seriously mentally ill to be removed from death row and receive psychiatric treatment.  Scott Panetti, whose Supreme Court case protects the seriously mentally ill from execution, died of natural causes on death row in Texas. Texas spent 30 years attempting to execute Panetti, despite his schizophrenia diagnosis and documented mental illness. The Supreme Court ruled in Panetti v. Quarterman that a death sentence cannot be carried out if the person lacks a rational understanding of the execution's reason.

A Houston-area man convicted of killing his wife died this week after more than 3 decades on death row, marking the 2nd condemned prisoner to die behind bars in the past month.  Prison officials confirmed that William "Billy the Kid" Mason was taken to the hospital on Wednesday and died of cardiac arrest Friday morning.  The 71-year-old was originally sent to death row in 1992, after prosecutors said he'd kidnapped his wife and beaten her to death under a bridge because she was playing the radio too loudly. According to court records, her body was found several days later under some logs near the San Jacinto River.

Scott Panetti died on Texas’ death row at the end of May 2025 after 30 years in prison. He became well-known for the role his case played in clar­i­fy­ing the legal stan­dard for deter­min­ing when defen­dants are com­pe­tent to face exe­cu­tion — prece­dent that con­tin­ues to shape court decisions nationwide. Mr. Panetti’s severe men­tal ill­ness man­i­fest­ed in his late teens, lead­ing to more than a dozen psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal­iza­tions through the 1980s and ear­ly 1990s. His doc­u­ment­ed con­di­tions includ­ed schiz­o­phre­nia, para­noid delu­sions, and audi­to­ry hal­lu­ci­na­tions. Medical records from mul­ti­ple facil­i­ties, includ­ing Kerrville State Hospital, detailed his elab­o­rate delu­sion­al beliefs, includ­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and the devel­op­ment of multiple personalities.

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas death row inmate with a long history of mental illness, and who tried to call Jesus Christ and John F. Kennedy as trial witnesses, is not competent to be executed, a federal judge ruled. Scott Panetti, 65, who has been on death row for nearly 30 years for fatally shooting his in-laws in front of his wife and young children, has contended that Texas wants to execute him to cover up incest, corruption, sexual abuse and drug trafficking he has uncovered. He has also claimed the devil has “blinded” Texas and is using the state to kill him to stop him from preaching and “saving souls.”

Similar measures passed in the House before, only to fall flat in the more conservative Senate chamber AUSTIN (TEXAS TRIBUNE) - In a state where mental illness is prevalent on death row, the Texas House of Representatives has again passed a measure to bar the death penalty for some people with severe mental illnesses. House Bill 727, by state Rep. Toni Rose, D-Dallas, finally passed the chamber Wednesday on a 97-48 vote, a week after the measure was tentatively passed. The bill’s final version precludes the death penalty for defendants diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. In a statement released Saturday, Rose said the bill was delayed “due to ongoing conversations we’re engaging in to present a strong level of support for the proposal to the Senate.”

The chamber has repeatedly passed legislation in recent sessions eliminating the death penalty in cases of severe mental illness, but hardline conservatives are now pushing back. A measure to bar the death penalty for defendants with severe mental illness hit an unexplained snag in the Texas House of Representatives Thursday, one day after the chamber had initially approved the bill. House Bill 727, by state Rep. Toni Rose, D-Dallas, tentatively passed Wednesday on a 84-61 vote. But a final vote scheduled for Thursday was postponed until next week without a given reason. Lawmakers will sometimes postpone votes on their bill if they do not expect it to pass. Rose passed similar measures out of the House in the last two legislative sessions, but is having more difficulty this year as hardline conservatives oppose the measure, arguing it will make it too hard to impose the death penalty, and that defendants could fake mental illness.

The criminal justice system is unequipped to grapple with the complexity of mental illness. In 2007, the Supreme Court case Panetti v. Quarterman set the standard for when the government can execute someone with severe mental illness. 15 years later, the state of Texas is still trying to execute the petitioner in that case, Scott Panetti. This week, a federal judge is hearing testimony over whether Panetti meets the standard the Supreme Court outlined in his case in 2007: Does he have a rational understanding of the link between his crime (the 1992 murder of his in-laws) and the impending punishment? Panetti’s lawyers say no. He’s been diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, and medical records from the past 40 years document a long series of struggles with delusions, paranoia, hallucinations, and disordered thinking. Between 1981 and 1992, Panetti was hospitalized 14 times for symptoms related to schizophrenia and manic depression. His delusions are often r...

A controversial psychiatrist who repeatedly testified that severely mentally ill death-row prisoners were faking their symptoms and were competent to be executed has been barred from medical practice in Florida. On March 31, 2021, the Florida Department of Health issued an emergency restriction on the medical license of Alan J. Waldman, M.D., prohibiting him from practicing as a medical doctor until the impaired practitioner program for the state’s Board of Medicine provides notice “that he is safe to return to the practice of medicine.” The Department also initiated proceedings “seeking formal discipline of [Waldman’s license] to practice as a medical doctor in the State of Florida.” Waldman gained notoriety for his role in clearing the path for executing several severely mentally ill prisoners in Florida and Texas. Florida governors appointed Waldman, whose website asserts is an expert in detecting “malingering,” to commissions to evaluate whether three death-row prisoners with long...

Under the measure, defendants who have active psychotic symptoms of certain mental illnesses at the time of the crime would be ineligible for capital punishment. But the bill's author believes death penalty proponents may keep it from passing on a necessary final vote later this week. For the second time in two weeks, the Texas House moved to change death penalty law. On Wednesday, the chamber tentatively passed a measure that would prohibit handing down a death sentence to someone with a severe mental illness, like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. House Bill 1936 by state Rep. Toni Rose, D-Dallas, would let capital murder defendants present evidence at trial that they were severely mentally ill at the time of the crime. If the jury agrees, the defendant would be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole if found guilty. The measure passed on a quick voice vote with no discussion after being delayed several times in the last week. The bill will ...

The United States Supreme Court today ruled in favor of EJI client Vernon Madison, a 68-year-old man suffering from severe vascular dementia following multiple life-threatening strokes.  The Court held that Mr. Madison, who is legally blind, incontinent, cannot walk without a walker, speaks with slurred speech, and has no memory of the crime or the circumstances that brought him to death row, is entitled to an assessment that recognizes that dementia and other mental conditions are covered by the Eighth Amendment's ban against cruel and unusual punishment. "We are thrilled that today the Court recognized that people with dementia like Vernon Madison, who cannot consistently orient to time and place, are protected from execution and cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment," said EJI Executive Director Bryan Stevenson, who argued Mr. Madison's case. "Prisoners who become incompetent due to dementia and severe mental illness are vulnerable...

Tennessee plans to kill Billy Ray Irick next month by lethal injection. If the execution goes through on August 9, a few weeks before his 60th birthday, he will be the 7th person put to death in the state since 2000, the year executions returned to Tennessee. On death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, a short drive from downtown Nashville, Irick has faced at least 3 previous execution dates, most recently in the fall of 2014. But there is an urgency this time, his longtime attorney, Gene Shiles, says. "This one feels much more ominous." Irick was convicted in 1986 of raping and murdering a 7-year-old girl named Paula Dyer in Knoxville. He was arrested and confessed soon after the crime. Irick had stayed with the child's family for 2 years prior to the murder, according to court filings; defense attorneys "attempted to create reasonable doubt about the identity of the perpetrator" during the guilt phase of the trial, yet called "no witnes...

Two controversial cases in Alabama reveal a disturbing trend in the death penalty in America. Vernon Madison doesn’t know why he’s going to be executed. The state of Alabama tells him that he fatally shot a police officer in the back and wounded his ex-girlfriend during a domestic dispute in 1985. State courts tossed out his first two convictions in the 1980s before a jury found him guilty for the third time in 1994. Those jurors, who were told of Vernon’s history of mental illness, sentenced him to life imprisonment without parole. The presiding judge then used an esoteric provision of Alabama law to sentence Madison to death instead. Now 67 years old, the longtime death-row inmate is hardly the same man who was convicted of capital murder almost a quarter-century ago. Multiple strokes have left him with vascular dementia, a severe and degenerative neurological disease that has stripped Madison of his mental functions. He can no longer see, walk independently, or contro...

Scott Panetti was just hours from death on Nov. 29, 2014. Not because of some rare disease with an unpronounceable name but, sadly, because of a not-so-rare disease with a name that can strike terror in the heart of the patient’s loved ones: Paranoid schizophrenia. Inmate No. 999164, the other label by which Panetti goes, received the sentence of death in 1995 after murdering his in-laws during a psychotic episode. What makes his case newsworthy is not the heinousness of the killings, which they were, not the outlandish behavior of Panetti at trial, which it was, and not the multiple attempts to subpoena the pope, Jesus Christ and President John F. Kennedy, which he did, but the fact that his case progressed to within mere hours of his execution before the courts acknowledged that his consistently disturbing behaviors, over more than 19 years as a diagnosed schizophrenic, signaled that he may not have been competent to stand trial in the first place. Virtually every coun...