Delusion and Execution
Can the State execute a person who is insane to the point of delusional? In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Ford v. Wainwright that the Eighth Amendment forbids the execution of the mentally ill, questioning “the retributive value of executing a person who has no comprehension of why he has been singled out and stripped of his fundamental right to life.” However, the Court left the standards for defining the required “comprehension” unclear in some respects. And despite strong insistence from the Court that medical expert opinion be heeded, the State of Texas and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals have been nothing if not determined to push the outer bounds of the Eighth Amendment to permit execution of the insane. When the Court reviews petitions for certiorari next week, it will consider the case of Scott Panetti, a case that will hopefully put this important question to the test for the second time in a decade.