Mental Illness

A recent article in the Fayetteville Observer in North Carolina captures the poignant story of one man's life on death row.  James Floyd Davis is a Vietnam veteran who lashed out with a burst of violence fourteen years ago, killing three people including his boss who had fired him a few days before.  He suffers from mental illness and post-traumatic stress disorder.  Through the intervention of a therapist who also served in Vietnam, it was learned that Davis was entitled to a Purple Heart and other medals earned during his service.  The army agreed to award him the medals and the prison eventually agreed to let him receive them.  The reporter, Chick Jacobs, sums up the story this way: "This is a story of how one veteran, wounded in body and spirit, reached into the demon-filled darkness of a fellow veteran who lost his way long ago. It's the unlikely tale of how a medal earned in one horror helped bring a touch of humanity to another."  The entire article can be read below:

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals recently ruled that a death row inmate who removed his only remaining eye and ate it “is clearly ‘crazy,’ but he is also ‘sane’ under Texas law,” rejecting his appeal.  Death row inmate Andre Thomas had stabbed some of his family members and ripped their hearts out. He then walked into the Sherman Police Department, admitted to the killings, and said God told him to commit them. Shortly after his arrest, he removed his right eye in 2004.  In December 2008, a death row officer found Thomas with a bloody face and it was determined that he had removed his left eye and eaten it.  Thomas had been to hospitals twice prior to his arrest for mental health issues, but had not received treatment. Judge Cathy Cochran, writing for the court, said, "This is an extraordinarily tragic case,'' because the deaths could have been avoided if Thomas had been treated.

Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights (MVFHR) and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) are working together to launch a national project concerned with the intersection of the capital punishment system and people with severe mental illness.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently ruled that the state can force two death row inmates to take anti-psychotic medication so they are mentally competent enough to proceed with their appeals and be executed. The two inmates were sentenced to death but were found incompetent to participate in the appeals filed on their behalf. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that mentally incompetent inmates may not be executed.