Capital Punishment for Mentally Ill?

The State of Texas has decided to execute an inmate that has severely mentally ill issues. Mr. Panetti committed murder and was convicted in 1995 for the killing of his in-laws with a hunting rifle. In his capital murder trial, he was dressed in a cowboy suit and attempted to subponea, there was a controversy about let him represent himself because his state of mind was diagnoses with schizophrenia, delusions, and psychotic episodes. Mr. Panetti is not just another insane prisoner; his name is synonymous with the Supreme Court’s modern jurisprudence about mental illness on death row. In Panetti v. Quarterman, decided in 2007, the justices held that it is not enough for a defendant simply to be aware that he is going to be executed and why — the previous standard the court had used in permitting the execution of the mentally ill. Rather, he must have a “rational understanding” of why the state plans to kill him. Mr. Panetti understood that the state claimed the reason for his death sentence was the murder of his in-laws, but he believed the real reason was “spiritual warfare” between “the demons and the forces of the darkness and God and the angels and the forces of light.” But the justices refused to set defined guidelines for determining whether someone is competent enough to be executed, and they did not overturn Mr. Panetti’s sentence. Instead, they sent the case back to the lower courts for a fuller reconsideration of his current mental state.