Does death penalty ever apply to those found insane?

The US Supreme Court hears Wednesday the case of a killer who may not grasp the tie between his crime and his punishment.

from the April 18, 2007 edition

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This is the core of the issue before the Supreme Court: Whether a death row inmate whose delusions prevent him from understanding the connection between his crimes and his imminent execution is mentally competent enough to face the death penalty.

Every judge or jury in Texas that has considered his case has concluded that Panetti has a mental illness but that he is nonetheless mentally competent enough to be executed.

The test in Texas is whether Panetti is aware that he is to be executed and aware of the state's reason for meting out that punishment.

Panetti's lawyer argues that the Texas standard is too low. Rather than mere awareness, the condemned man must be capable of having a rational understanding of the connection between his crime and his punishment, Mr. Hampton says.

"There is a big difference between knowing you are in a room and knowing why you are in a room," says Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.

If Panetti doesn't understand why he is being executed, it undermines one of society's key goals behind the punishment – retribution, Panetti's lawyer says.

Others disagree. "Retribution is not focused on the mind of the offender," says Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, in a friend of the court brief. "The focus of retribution is on society as a whole and what makes for a just society."

A just society punishes those who are morally responsible for their crimes, he says. "Panetti knows what he did and knows that he has been sentenced to death for the crime," Mr. Scheidegger writes. "His delusional belief in a conspiracy against him does not negate his moral responsibility for the crime he chose to commit and still knows he committed."

Panetti's lawyer counters that retribution is designed to force the offender to endure suffering proportionate to his crime to pay a debt owed to society. That is why the offender's mental capacity at the time of punishment is crucial to retribution, Hampton says. "The offender must suffer for the right reason before the community can confidently conclude that he is getting his just desserts for his wrongdoing," Hampton writes.

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