And they don't let a little thing like clearly apparent insanity stop them.
madison.com | Rob Zaleski: Death penalty hits home : To hear Jack and Yvonne Panetti tell it, the mental problems that have tormented their son were evident almost two decades ago. And it was the demons he was battling, they contend, that caused Scott Panetti - who'd shaved his head and was clad in military fatigues - to shoot and kill his parents-in-law after breaking into their Fredericksburg, Texas, home on a September morning in 1992.
But three years later - after a bizarre trial in which Scott, acting as his own lawyer, wanted to subpoena Jesus Christ and John F. Kennedy, among others - a Texas jury decided otherwise.
And so, barring any last-minute developments, the 45-year-old Panetti - a former all-conference football star at Poynette High School in Wisconsin - will be executed by lethal injection on Feb. 5 at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas. [...] Scott's supporters argue that because he'd been diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1986 and had been hospitalized more than a dozen times before the crime, he never should have been allowed to represent himself at the trial in the first place. In fact, a hearing in 1994 to determine whether Scott was mentally competent ended in a mistrial, Hougas notes. But a jury at a second hearing later that year did find Scott competent, which cleared the way for his trial in 1995.
Even allowing that Panetti was competent to stand trial in the first place -- and you would think that someone who had been hospitalized that frequently would almost by definition be incompentent to stand trial -- surely that many hospitalizations would indicate that he was not competent to serve as his own attorney. And surely any judge worth his or her salt, as soon as the defendent tried to put Jesus Christ and John F. Kennedy on the stand, would find him incompetent to serve as his own attorney.
What puzzles me is why the US Supreme Court would refuse appeals on this case. The federal courts do seem generally to be getting rather testy with Texas' approach to what it is pleased to call a court system. This case would seem to be tailor-made for a reversal, especially in light of their decision in the Atkins case (although that had to do with mental retardation rather than mental illness).
Posted by iain at January 27, 2004 12:52 AM
