U.S. court hears arguments on Texas death row inmate's mental competency
By Lisa Maria Garza
DALLAS (Reuters) - Lawyers for a Texas death row inmate told an appeals court on Wednesday that their schizophrenic client was too delusional to be put to death and they requested funds for experts to determine the state of his mental health.
But attorneys for Texas told the mental competency hearing for convicted murderer Scott Panetti, 57, whose case has seen a two decade-long legal battle because of questions over his mental health, that courts had ruled him competent to stand trial and that he should be executed.
"Panetti's mental status has at best been severely exaggerated by his counsel,” the state wrote previously in a legal brief opposing his stay of execution.
U.N. human rights officials have called on Texas to halt the execution. Major Texas newspapers including the Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning News have said in editorials the execution of a seriously mentally ill inmate would be inexcusable.
Mental health experts, evangelical Christians and some former judges and prosecutors have said the execution would cross a moral line and serve no retributive or deterrent value, court documents said.
Panetti was set to die on Dec. 3, 2014, when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay just hours before his scheduled execution to allow for the competency hearing.
He was convicted of fatally shooting his wife's parents in the central Texas town of Fredericksburg in 1992. Panetti shaved his head, sawed off a shotgun and broke into the home of Joe and Amanda Alvarado, killing the two. His wife and daughter witnessed him shooting his mother-in-law, the Texas attorney general said.
He represented himself at his 1995 trial and donned a cowboy suit, often speaking incoherently and seeking to call Jesus Christ and former President John F. Kennedy as defense witnesses.
"Up until now, Mr. Panetti has had to proceed without any expert assistance," Kathryn Kase, one of the lawyers who has represented Panetti, said in a phone interview.
"He is indigent, has been on death row for 20 years and has no way to afford his own mental health professionals,” said Kase, the director of the Texas Defender Service, a public defender service specializing in death row cases.
Panetti was hospitalized a dozen times for psychosis and delusions in the six years leading up to the crime, his lawyers said. He has not had a mental health screening since 2007.
(Reporting by Lisa Maria Garza; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Peter Cooney)
