I have several reasons for opposing capital punishment. One is that killing a defenseless person is the most hypocritical way there is to tell people not to kill. Another is that nobody is beyond redemption. Life without possibility of parole protects the public. One of the men with whom I do volunteer work will never breathe free air, but he’s completely dedicated to helping other prisoners learn mental fitness to help them from making the same mistakes that he committed on the way to becoming a serial killer. For this reason, I would not favor the death penalty, even for Republican war criminals, who are responsible for more innocent deaths than any death row prisoner. In addition, far too many innocents have been executed. Furthermore, there is no way to administer it fairly. Texas Republicans know the man they want to kill is insane. But Republicans are the Party of Death.
On Dec. 3, Texas plans to execute an inmate named Scott Panetti, who was convicted in 1995 for murdering his in-laws with a hunting rifle. There is no question that Mr. Panetti committed the murders. There is also no question that he is severely mentally ill, and has been for decades.
During his capital murder trial, at which he was inexplicably allowed to represent himself, Mr. Panetti dressed in a cowboy suit and attempted to subpoena, among others, John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ. A standby lawyer said his behavior was “scary” and “trance-like,” and called the trial “a judicial farce.”
It was not an act. Mr. Panetti, now 56, was first diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 20, and in the years before the murders he was hospitalized several times for delusions and psychotic episodes.
In this respect, he is no different from the estimated 350,000 inmates around the country with mental illness — 10 times the number of people in state psychiatric hospitals. But 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.
Noting Mr. Panetti’s “well-documented history of mental illness,” the court held that capital punishment serves no retributive purpose when the defendant’s understanding of crime and punishment is so distorted that it “has little or no relation to the understanding of those concepts shared by the community as a whole.”… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <NY Times>
The Justices did not declare Panetti insane. They just referred the matter back to the lower court. Texas courts deferred to Republican blood lust, and unless SCROTUS intervenes, Rick Perry will murder this man on 12/3. He and the Texas Republican Party are just drooling for more death.
8 Responses to “Texas Is Premeditating Murder”
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Killing others seems to be a favorite pasttime of the Rethugs. It doesn't matter what the venue is. They do like delgating others to commit the act of murder for them. Mr. Panetti is mentally ill. What's their excuse except blood-lust?
Capital punishment is merely the end of a long trail of misunderstandings and injustices, and it also ties in to the public's resentment of prisoners as a group.
Prisoners are the ultimate of the "undeserving" poor. Not only did they not do anything positive to deserve survival; instead, they went out and did BAD THINGS and we REWARD them with luxury accommodations (they aren't), free food (sometimes even edible), and free medical care (no extra charge for malpractice)! They should all be killed, it would be cheaper (it wouldn't), or else forced to do slave labor (bad idea for too many reasons to list here). Or maybe both. Mental illness? That's just a cop-out (apparently Gresham's Law applies?).
You would think that one visit to a prison would be enough to disabuse anyone of these false impressions – but you will even hear or read corrections officers expressing opinions like "We live in the same conditions, the only difference is we get to go home when our shift is over." (No, you don't live in the same conditions. There is a huge difference between being in control and not being in control.)
It's a little like Tom the Dancing Bug's Lucky Ducky – only more so. No matter what Plutocrat Pup does to try to prevent it and make Lucky Ducky "accountable," somehow Lucky Ducky always ends up getting "free money."
If you can wrap your head around that mindset, it's no wonder so many see execution as desirable. It's the only victory they ever get over the "undeserving poor." Well, that is, except when a cop shoots one.
I can describe it, but I don't know how to get through to it. Jesus (the real one) couldn't. How can I expect to?
The recent killing of people, even innocent people, is just practice leading up to the main event. There's more to come, and on a scale you can't begin to imagine.
I am totally opposed to capital punishment. Too many innocents are convicted for one thing, and for another, what is the person who performs the execution doing? Murder.
Conditions in prison are not a luxury by any means. One of my nephews was sentenced to 90 days in a regional jail. He slept on bare concrete almost the entire time he was there, got a black eye, "by accident" by one of the jailers. We were only allowed to see him one day a week, and all who wanted to see him had to be there at the same time, if you were late, you didn't see him. He had to make collect calls to his family, which were priced ten times higher than they are outside. We could not bring him clean underwear, he had to "buy" it. This was a regional jail, not a prison. I don't want to imagine what a prison is like.
So I wonder if Herr Perry is yet again puffing out his chest with pride as he prepares to sign the death warrant that allows someone else to murder the prisoner? Will this thinking open the door to euthanasia of the mentally ill or feeble so as to rid society of something they might do?
Time for the Republicanus/Teabagger death panels to go the way of the dodo bird. And they thought Obamacare had death panels?
I wonder how Perry squares this with his "Christian" beliefs?
Thanks. Excelklent meeting in prison. Exhausted
Texas – Population Control on Steroids.