Executing the Insane Is Against the Law of the Land. So Why Do We Keep Doing It?

Executing the Insane Is Against the Law of the Land. So Why Do We Keep Doing It?

Such "mindless vengeance," the Supreme Court points out, "simply offends humanity."

—By Stephanie Mencimer
| March/April 2015 Issue

Six years before he shaved his head, donned camo fatigues, and fatally shot his in-laws in front of his estranged wife and daughter, Scott Panetti piled up furniture and valuables in his yard in Fredericksburg, Texas, and sprayed it all down with water to get rid of the devil he was sure had possessed the house.

It was hardly the first time he'd done something bizarre. Starting in his early 20s, Panetti had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, delusions, auditory hallucinations, and manic depression—he was hospitalized at least 14 times. Two years prior to the murders, he was involuntarily committed after swinging a cavalry sword at his wife and daughter. After he turned himself in for the 1992 killings, he blamed the crime on "Sarge," one of several personalities he was convinced shared his body. The state charged him with capital murder.

The trial was a farce. Over even the prosecutor's objections, Judge Stephen Ables let Panetti act as his own lawyer, and allowed him to continue representing himself after he went off his antipsychotic medication. The defendant showed up in court decked out in what a family friend described as a 1920s-era cowboy outfit: "He wore a large hat and a huge bandanna. He wore weird boots with stirrups—the pants were tucked in at the calf," she later testified. "He looked like a clown."

Standing before the jury, Panetti called himself "Sarge" and rambled incoherently for hours about everything from the TV show Quincy, M.E. to castrating a horse, with little interference from the judge—who did, however, intercede to question the relevance of belt buckles. In addition to his veterinarian, Panetti subpoenaed Jesus, John F. Kennedy, and the pope, and issued a stream-of-consciousness description of the crime:

More:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/scott-panetti-mental-illness-death-penalty