Kwame Rockwell is scheduled to be executed by the State of Texas on Wednesday, October 24, despite his lifelong history of severe mental illness that predates the crime, fixed delusions that snakes and demons surround him and invade his body, and the fact that the state’s own doctors have sent him to the psychiatric unit […]
Category: Ford v. Wainwright
Important decisions in two North Texas death penalty-related cases were announced last Friday: A State District Judge in Dallas determined that John Battaglia is mentally competent to be executed, while a Tarrant County jury imposed a new death sentence for the first time in more than two years.
A ruling by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals today, September 11, 2013, finds that a state district judge does not have the authority to order Texas death row inmate Steven Staley to be forcibly medicated in order to render him competent to be executed. Staley has been on death row since 1991; he […]
Late last night, October 10, 2012, the State of Texas executed Jonathan Marcus Green for the 2000 rape, abduction, and murder of 12-year-old Christina Neal in Montgomery County. The execution occurred after much legal wrangling over Green’s mental competency. He reportedly suffered from schizophrenia, including severe hallucinations, for which he received no medication. In 2010, […]
According to the Associated Press, U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas has stayed the execution of Jonathan Green, who was scheduled to be put to death on Wednesday, October 10 for the 2000 abduction and murder of Christina Neal in Montgomery County (“Federal judge stops execution this week in Texas,” October 8, 2012). Judge Atlas ruled on an appeal […]
“Will Texas execute a psychotic man?” That’s the question posed by Andrew Cohen in his latest piece in The Atlantic (July 30, 2012). Cohen is referring, of course, to Marcus Druery, who was scheduled to be executed on Wednesday, August 1, for the 2002 murder of Skyyler Browne in Brazos County. The Texas Court of […]
Yesterday, July 26, 2012, attorneys for Marcus Druery filed a request for a stay of execution with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Druery is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday, August 1, for the 2002 murder of Skyyler Brown in Brazos County. His attorneys have sought a full competency hearing to determine his mental […]
Earlier today, July 24, 2012, Brazos County District Court Judge J.D. Langley denied a motion to hold a full hearing on Marcus Druery’s execution competency claim. Druery is scheduled to be executed next Wednesday, August 1, despite diagnoses from the State’s own mental health professionals that he is severely psychotic. He was sentenced to death […]