[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 26



TEXAS:

'Floridly psychotic' Texas inmate's storied history of mental illness likely 
won't halt his execution; Barring the success of last-minute appeals, Scott 
Panetti, 56, will be executed on 3 December despite clear evidence that he is 
insane and his original trial was a farce


Scott Panetti woke early on the morning of 8 September, 1992. He shaved his 
head, dressed in camouflage gear, sawed off a shotgun, grabbed a rifle and a 
knife belt and drove to the house in the Texas hill country where his estranged 
wife, Sonja, was staying with her family.

He broke in, cornered Amanda and Joseph Alvarado and asked Sonja who she wanted 
to die 1st: her, or her parents. Panetti shot the couple dead in front of his 
wife and their 3-year-old daughter then took them to a cabin and held them 
hostage until he was arrested.

The terrible eruption of violence was the nadir in Panetti's long history of 
mental illness. Now, 22 years later, and amid widespread protests, the state of 
Texas appears hell-bent on carrying out the ultimate punishment for his crime. 
Barring the success of last-minute appeals, the 56-year-old will be executed on 
3 December despite clear evidence that he is insane and his original trial was 
a farce.

'A judicial disaster'

Panetti's attorneys are seeking for his sentence to be commuted to life, or at 
least for a reprieve to provide time and resources to show that he is 
incompetent to be executed.

On Tuesday, the Texas court of criminal appeals, by a 5-4 vote, denied the 
attorneys' latest petition for a stay of execution. Panetti's lawyers had 
argued that executing a severely mentally ill inmate would violate the 8th and 
14th amendments and cited new research showing that death sentences are rarely 
imposed on the mentally-ill and that no "guilty but mentally ill" capital 
defendant has been sentenced to death in 20 years. As a result of this national 
consensus, they argued, it would be unconstitutional to impose a punishment 
that "offends contemporary standards of decency" and as unreasonable to execute 
the mentally ill as it would be to put to death the intellectually disabled.

Earlier this month, the attorneys sent a petition for clemency to Texas 
governor Rick Perry and the Texas board of pardons and paroles (PDF). The 
appeal describes Panetti as "floridly psychotic" and calls his case a "judicial 
disaster" where "evidence of his incompetency runs like a fissure through every 
proceeding". They are awaiting responses.

A Wisconsin-born US Navy veteran, Panetti was first diagnosed with 
schizophrenia in 1978, when he was 20. In the 1980s and early 90s he was 
hospitalised more than a dozen times for mental illnesses including 
hallucinations and paranoid delusions. His 1st wife told hospital workers that 
he was obsessed with exorcising the devil from his house, a process that 
involved burying furniture in his yard and nailing the curtains shut. He and 
Sonja Alvarado had separated about a month before he murdered her parents. She 
had taken out a protective order against him less than a week before his 
rampage.

A jury at a competency hearing was unable to decide if he was fit to stand 
trial, but a different jury at a 2nd hearing decided that he could. Panetti 
rejected a plea offer of a life sentence and chose to represent himself at his 
trial in 1995, evidently because of a suspicion of attorneys.

Off medication after experiencing some sort of religious epiphany, at trial he 
dressed in a purple cowboy suit, made a threatening gesture at the jury and 
tried to subpoena Jesus, the Pope, John F Kennedy and the actor Anne Bancroft.

Panetti frequently indulged in ostentatious, incoherent, nonsensical ramblings, 
such as a monologue to prospective jurors about Native Americans and his "Injun 
beliefs as a shaman", court transcripts show. He claimed the murders were 
committed by his alter ego, "Sarge". He took the stand in his own defence for 
wildly unfocused testimony that included his role in a school play, his job 
artificially inseminating cattle, taking drugs, being a rodeo cowboy, stories 
from his time in the Navy and when he once killed a rattlesnake.

He then assumed the persona of Sarge when testifying about the killings: 
"Sonja, Joe, Amanda kitchen. Joe bayonet, not attacking. Sarge not afraid, not 
threatened. Sarge not angry, not mad. Sarge, boom, boom. Sarge, boom, boom, 
boom, boom. Sarge, boom, boom.

"Sarge is gone. No more Sarge. Sonja and Birdie. Birdie and Sonja. Joe, Amanda 
lying kitchen, here, there, blood. No leave. Scott, remember exactly what Sarge 
did. Shot the lock. Walked in the kitchen, Sonja, where's Birdie? Sonja here. 
Joe, bayonet, door, Amanda. Boom, boom, blood, blood. Demons. Ha, ha, ha, ha, 
oh, Lord, oh, you."

In an affidavit, S Preston Douglass Jr, a defence attorney fired by Panetti, 
said: "After the verdict, I spoke with a couple of jurors who had sat in 
Scott's case ... they basically told me the same thing. They said that if Scott 
had been represented by attorneys that he would not have received the death 
penalty. [1 juror] told me that the goofy things Scott said and did scared the 
jury. They knew he had a long-term mental history, but because he scared them 
they voted for death."

Panetti would be the 279th inmate executed during Perry's tenure

Life without parole was not an option for Texas capital murder juries until 
2005. Soon after his conviction, Panetti was found incompetent to waive counsel 
for the appeals process.

He was a day away from being executed in February 2004, until a court 
intervened to grant a stay. In 2007 the US supreme court reviewed the case and 
underlined that inmates cannot be executed if they do not understand the reason 
for their impending death, as well as noting several errors made by the state 
court and the vagueness of the Texas standard to define insanity.

Court evidence suggests Panetti believes that Texas authorities are part of a 
Satanic plot and plan to kill him to stop him from preaching the Gospel. 
Appeals courts have concurred with expert opinions that Panetti is seriously 
mentally ill, yet have found him competent to be executed on the basis that he 
is aware he is to be put to death and has some degree of rational understanding 
as to why.

Texas courts hostile to the idea that an individual once sentenced to death 
should not have that sentence carried out

"Texas courts are hostile to the idea that an individual once sentenced to 
death should not have that sentence carried out," Kathryn Kase, one of his 
lawyers, told the Guardian, adding that courts have failed to understand the 
complex nature of paranoid schizophrenia. "Scott Panetti is not incompetent all 
of the time," she said. "He is competent 1 day, incompetent the next."

Panetti would be the 279th Texas inmate executed during Perry's tenure. The 
possible Republican presidential candidate, who is stepping down as governor in 
January after 14 years, has very rarely used his power to grant clemency or 
reprieves. In 2001, he vetoed a bill passed by the Texas legislature that would 
have banned the execution of the mentally disabled.

In 2004, he rejected the pardons and paroles board's recommendation of clemency 
for Kelsey Patterson, a paranoid schizophrenic man who heard voices and 
believed the military had planted a control device inside his head.

The case could ultimately be appealed again to the supreme court, which 
declined to hear it without explanation last month. Activists, mental health 
organisations, prominent legal figures, politicians and religious groups have 
urged Texas not to go ahead with the execution, which will be via lethal 
injection using drugs from an unknown source. On 13 November this year, 30 
people, including distinguished lawyers, former judges and Mark White, a former 
Texas governor, signed a letter to Perry and the board asking that Panetti's 
sentence be commuted to life.

They wrote: "Our concern is that the criminal justice system recognizes both 
the diminished culpability of a person with severe mental illness, like Mr 
Panetti, and the absence of penological value in carrying out a death sentence 
in a case of such extreme mental illness."

Panetti's lawyers contend that recent documents show his health has 
deteriorated since his most recent competency hearing nearly seven years ago, 
raising the claim that his execution would be "cruel and unusual" in violation 
of the 8th amendment of the US constitution.

Documents filed by his lawyers indicate that his behaviour has become 
increasingly aggressive, including throwing urine out of his cell in November 
last year and telling a prison officer he will "smite you for your wickedness". 
He filed a complaint with prison officials claiming that "Satanic graffiti" had 
appeared on the walls of his cell. Panetti's lawyers have not made him 
available for media interviews.

During a visit with Kase earlier this month, according to one court filing, he 
told her that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice had implanted a 
listening device in one of his teeth and placed surveillance equipment inside 
decorative Halloween pumpkins in the prison's dental surgery.

His attorneys also argue that their efforts have been hampered by the failure 
of Texas officials to provide formal notification of the execution date. It was 
set in mid-October but the attorneys claim they only discovered it when they 
read a media report at the end of the month. They say this gives them too 
little time to source and analyse prison documents and to meet court deadlines.

Kase said that since the 1980s authorities have too often locked up the 
mentally ill in prisons rather than treating them in specialist institutions. 
"Our jails and prisons in the US have become the primary place for people 
suffering from mental illness," she said. "Jail only knows how to incarcerate, 
it doesn't know how to treat.... I have no doubt that there are other Scott 
Panettis out there."

(source: The Guardian)

********************

Can Ron Paul and Conservative Evangelicals Save a Texas Death-Row Inmate? A 
rightwing crusade aims to stop the execution of Scott Panetti, a mentally ill 
convicted murder.


When Scott Panetti represented himself in a Texas capital murder case in 1995, 
wearing a purple cowboy suit and calling himself "Sarge," he called as a 
witness a veterinarian who once lived across the street from him. Panetti 
questioned the vet about the time he euthanized Little Blue, Panetti's old dog. 
The episode had nothing to do with the case. Other witnesses Panetti tried to 
call to the stand: John F. Kennedy and Jesus.

Trial transcripts, medical records, and expert witness testimony have 
documented that Panetti suffers from severe schizophrenia. He believes Texas is 
going to execute him to stop him from preaching the gospel - not because he 
shaved his head, donned camo fatigues, and shot and killed his in-laws in 1992. 
The Supreme Court has declared that executing the mentally ill violates the 
Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, but several 
Texas and federal courts - including the US Supreme Court - have reviewed 
Panetti's case, and each one has ruled that the state can proceed with his 
lethal injection. Now, with Panetti's execution scheduled for December 3, the 
only thing that might save him is a national campaign being mounted by 
conservatives, including former Texas Republican congressman and libertarian 
icon Ron Paul.

Panetti's lawyers have filed a clemency petition with the Texas Board of 
Pardons and Parole, which can recommend that Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, 
commute Panetti's sentence to life in prison without parole. That petition has 
received an outpouring of support from conservatives and evangelicals. In 
addition to Paul, this group includes Jay Sekulow, an evangelical lawyer famous 
for pressing religious liberties cases on behalf of social conservatives.

Paul's involvement in the case is unusual. Last year, he publicly endorsed a 
new advocacy group, Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, saying, "I 
believe that support for the death penalty is inconsistent with libertarianism 
and traditional conservatism." This was the result of a years-long evolution. 
In 2007, Paul noted, "There was a time I simply stated that I supported the 
death penalty. Now my views are not so clearly defined...After years spent in 
Washington, I have become more aware than ever of the government's ineptness 
and the likelihood of its making mistakes. I no longer trust the U.S. 
government to invoke and carry out a death sentence under any conditions." But 
Paul at that time didn't believe that the federal government should interfere 
with state executions.

Now that he's out of office, Paul's gone further, and he has come out firmly 
against Panetti's execution. Heather Beaudoin, the coordinator for 
Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, says that this is the first 
time she's aware of that Paul has weighed in publicly against an execution.

It's also unusual for conservative Christians to support a clemency petition 
like Panetti's. The last time evangelicals really rallied en masse to prevent a 
pending execution was in 1998, in the case of Karla Faye Tucker, who converted 
to Christianity in prison and became a conservative cause celebre. Despite the 
pleadings of evangelicals such as Pat Robertson, the Texas governor at the 
time, George W. Bush, went ahead with the execution, and Tucker became the 
first woman executed in the state since 1863.

The Panetti case is different. His religious fervor is the product of a brain 
disorder, and the evangelicals' opposition to his execution is not related to 
his religious proclamations. It is more of a reflection of the shift in public 
attitudes regarding capital punishment that has been driven by the growing 
number of exonerations of death-row inmates, the high number of mentally ill 
and disabled people sentenced to die, and the inefficient and expensive 
administration of capital punishment. "A lot of conservatives are late to 
realize that the whole criminal justice system is part of the government," says 
Richard Viguerie, a prominent conservative leader and an ardent opponent of the 
death penalty.

Religious conservatives are increasingly joining those who would like to see 
the end of the death penalty, citing their movement's commitment to a "culture 
of life," which has traditionally focused primarily on restricting abortion. 
Conservative evangelicals, says Beaudoin, have been animated by the Panetti 
case over the past few weeks. Her outfit has opposed other executions, but, she 
says, the Panetti case has hit a nerve. She has been surprised by the number of 
influential Christians who have signed on to the clemency petition, especially 
Samuel Rodriguez, the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership 
Coalition, who's on Time magazine's 2013 list of the 100 most influential 
people in the world. Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director 
who now runs a pro-life ministry for former abortion clinic employees, wrote an 
editorial in the Dallas News calling on Texas to spare Panetti.

"This is the largest outpouring of support on a death penalty case we've seen 
from evangelicals, and you can see why, given the ridiculous nature of this 
case," Beaudoin says. "A lot of folks who signed this [clemency] letter might 
have given pause about signing on to a letter opposing the death penalty 
generally, but they think we have no business executing Scott Panetti." She 
adds, "As Christians, we're called protect the most vulnerable. And there's 
just no question that Scott Panetti is in that number as someone who's suffered 
from severe mental illness. We all want to keep society safe, but I'm thankful 
there are other ways to do that than executing people."

Almost 20 years after representing himself at trial in a purple Tom Mix getup, 
Panetti still signs documents with cowboy references.

But can conservatives and evangelicals persuade Perry? The Texas governor is 
deeply tied to the religious right, which enthusiastically backed his 
gaffe-heavy run for the White House in 2012. So he might want to be sympathetic 
to their crusade. And as a lame-duck governor, Perry doesn't have to worry 
about his re-election prospects in the state that leads the nation in 
executions. Moreover, Perry has joined with other conservatives in pushing to 
reform the criminal justice system, particularly regarding harsh mandatory 
minimum drug sentencing.

Yet Perry has overseen more executions than any American governor in recent 
history - 10 this year - and he has never shown any qualms about executing the 
mentally ill before. The most notable instance of this was the case of Kelsey 
Patterson, a man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

In 1992, a few days after his brother tried to have him committed to a mental 
hospital, Patterson shot and killed 2 people. After the shooting, Patterson 
stripped down to his socks and paced the street naked and shouting until he was 
arrested. During his trial, Patterson insisted that the military had implanted 
a device in his ear and was controlling him. The Texas pardons board 
recommended Perry spare Patterson's life, but Perry ignored the board and went 
forward with Patterson's execution anyway.

Perry is now pondering joining his party's 2016 presidential fray, and there's 
no telling if a grant of clemency for Panetti could provide political fodder in 
what is expected to be a crowded field of candidates. But the Panetti case 
could give Perry the opportunity to show a more compassionate side of himself 
to an American electorate in which support for the death penalty is at an 
all-time low.

Young people, and young evangelical Christians in particular, are moving away 
from supporting capital punishment in large numbers. A poll conducted last 
summer by the Barna Group, a Christian public opinion research firm, found that 
about half of practicing Christian baby boomers support the death penalty, but 
only 23 % of Christian millennials felt that way. (Barna also asked the 
survey-takers, "What would Jesus do?" and found that only 5 % of Americans - 
and 10 % of practicing Christians - thought Jesus would support the death 
penalty.)

"The younger generation is finding that it doesn't make a lot of sense to say 
we're pro-life and then be out front promoting executions," says Beaudoin, who 
at 30, is one of those pro-life/anti-death penalty millennials.

Perry's options in Panetti's case are limited, as a pro-death penalty bias is 
baked into Texas law. Unlike many other states, Perry doesn't have the power to 
single-handedly commute Panetti's sentence to life in prison without parole. He 
can only do so if the pardons board recommends clemency, which the board has 
only done only 4 times since 1982 regarding an imminent execution. He can 
ignore a recommendation for clemency and move forward with an execution, but he 
can't ignore a denial of a clemency petition and on his own spare a life. But 
Perry appointed all the sitting board members. It seems likely that if he urged 
them to advise clemency for Panetti, they would take him seriously.

Perry can unilaterally grant Panetti a 1-time 30-day stay of execution, which 
Panetti's lawyers have requested so that he can have a new mental competency 
evaluation. Panetti hasn't been evaluated by mental health professionals in 
seven years, and his lawyers argue that new documents disclosed by the Texas 
Department of Criminal Justice indicate that his mental health has deteriorated 
significantly since then. (He now believes a listening device has been 
implanted in his tooth and that "Satanic graffiti" has been appearing on the 
walls of his cell.)

If such an evaluation finds Panetti doesn't have a rational understanding of 
his impending execution, Panetti can ask the court to stay his execution and 
hold a hearing to evaluate whether he's sane enough to be executed. So far, all 
of the Texas state courts have denied the request for a new competency 
evaluation, including the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which rejected 
Panetti's appeal Tuesday in a 5-4 vote. But the dissent in that decision 
suggests that Panetti's case is prompting serious debate, even among Texas's 
conservative judges. In her dissent, Perry appointee and Republican judge Elsa 
Alcala said the decision, at worst, "will result in the irreversible and 
constitutionally impermissible execution of a mentally incompetent person."

Gabriel Salguero, the president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition 
and one of 50 evangelical leaders who signed a letter asking Perry and the 
board of pardons to spare Panetti, says that Perry is well aware that 
evangelicals - and Latino evangelicals in particular - are a fast-growing 
demographic nationwide. But, he adds, this decision is "not about politics. 
It's about morality and what kind of country we want to be." He believes saving 
Panetti is "an easy lift...We don't execute people with mental illness, just as 
we don't execute minors." And he hopes Perry will come around: "We will be 
entering the Advent season, the high holy days. It seems to me the right 
message is to talk about saving lives. Maybe we'll get an Advent miracle in 
Texas."

(source: Mother Jones)

***********************

Woman watched 280 executions ---- Former TDCJ spokeswoman Michelle Lyons 
recalls emotions job elicited


Starting in 2001, Michelle Lyons watched men and women die in the Texas 
Department of Corrections death chamber inside the Walls Unit in Huntsville.

Lyons was the prison system's public information officer until her retirement 
in 2012 -- a job that required that she witness executions.

"There's so much emotion in there and for so many years, I turned it off. And 
once I started thinking about it, I opened the flood gates," Lyons said as she 
discussed her years with the prison system.

She said that at first she viewed it as just a job.

"I was, I would say, self-righteous about it," she said. "'That was your 
choice: you committed the crime and you were executed. That was your 
punishment.'"

But Lyons said that as the years passed and the number of executions she 
witnessed rose, her views changed.

"I began seeing that it wasn't so black and white," she said. "There was a lot 
of gray in the middle."

In the beginning, Lyons said she felt empathy mainly for the families of the 
victims. But later she said that though her support for the death penalty never 
wavered, she sometimes felt conflicted.

"I really started to feel for the inmates' families because they too had not 
asked to be put in that position," she said.

Lyons recalled that though there were times inmates had to be forced into the 
death chamber, most accepted their fate and went in calmly. But calm was a 
feeling seldom shared by the mothers of both inmates and victims.

"Seeing all those moms go through what they did was extremely hard to watch," 
she said. "Especially after I became a mom."

She said that since she retired her primary job is being a mom.

"Do I ever have a desire to see another one?" she said. "No."

(source: KSAT news)

***************************

Judge Rules Against DNA Testing in Reed Case; Resets the execution date for 
March 5


A last-ditch effort to introduce new DNA testing into the case of Rodney Reed 
was denied Tuesday evening shortly after 5pm in a Bastrop County courtroom. 
Visiting Judge Doug Shaver ruled against the Bastrop native, on death row since 
1998. Supporters for Reed said that Shaver's reasoning was not clear.

In addition to denying the testing, Shaver accepted a motion from the state to 
move Reed's execution date from Jan. 14, 2015 to March 5, 2015 - an interesting 
move considering that the state presented testimony on Tuesday that the 
"untimely application for the DNA testing" had amounted to an "unreasonable 
delay in the execution date." That information was relayed through the Campaign 
to End the Death Penalty's Lily Hughes, who was in the courtroom throughout the 
day. She added: "They said it was a tactic to delay the execution."

Reed, 46, was convicted in 1998 for the April 1996 killing of 19-year-old 
Stacey Stites. Stites' body was found by the side of a road near Bastrop. DNA 
from semen found inside her body linked Reed to the crime, though it's been 
hotly contested as to whether he was in fact the killer. (Aside from the DNA, 
there was no other physical evidence linking Reed to the crime. Reed maintains 
that he was having a secretive affair with Stites before her death.) In recent 
years, support has mounted for the possibility that Stites' then-fiance Jimmy 
Fennell Jr., a former Georgetown police sergeant currently serving time in 
prison for rape, actually killed her.

DNA testing has occurred throughout the lengthy appeals process, though never 
on a piece of the belt used to strangle Stites to death. The motion to test the 
items was introduced in July at the hearing in which Reed's January execution 
date was set. Hughes said the defense spent a portion of Tuesday's proceedings 
trying to convince Judge Shaver that there had been changes to the laws 
surrounding DNA testing that made the kind of testing they were asking for 
available.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Reed's appeal for a new trial 
on the basis that he received incompetent legal help during his initial trial 
in 1998.

(source: Austin Chronicle)

*******************************

Executions under Rick Perry, 2001-present-----279

Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982-present----518

Perry #--------scheduled execution date-----name---------Tx. #

280------------Dec. 3-------------------Scott Panetti---------519

281------------Dec. 11------------------Robert Ladd-----------520

282------------Jan. 15------------------Richard Vasquez-------521

283------------Jan. 21-------------------Arnold Prieto--------522

284------------Jan. 28-------------------Garcia White---------523

285------------Feb. 4--------------------Donald Newbury-------524

286------------Feb. 10-------------------Les Bower, Jr.-------525

287------------Mar. 5--------------------Rodney Reed----------526

288------------Mar. 11-------------------Manuel Vasquez-------527

289------------Mar. 18-------------------Randall Mays---------528

290------------Apr. 15-------------------Manual Garza---------529

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)