State Can Make Inmate Sane Enough to Execute, Court Rules

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State Can Make Inmate Sane Enough to Execute, Court Rules

 

February 11, 2003

By ADAM LIPTAK

 

The federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled yesterday that

officials in Arkansas can force a prisoner on death row to

take antipsychotic medication to make him sane enough to

execute. Without the drugs, the prisoner, Charles Laverne

Singleton, could not be put to death under a United States

Supreme Court decision that prohibits the execution of the

insane.

 

Yesterday's 6-to-5 decision is the first by a federal

appeals court to allow such an execution.

 

" Singleton presents the court with a choice between

involuntary medication followed by an execution and no

medication followed by psychosis and imprisonment, " Judge

Roger L. Wollman wrote for the majority in ruling by the

United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

 

Judge Wollman said the first choice was the better one, at

least when the drugs were generally beneficial to the

prisoner. He said courts did not need to consider the

ultimate result of medicating the prisoner.

 

" Eligibility for execution is the only unwanted consequence

of the medication, " he wrote.

 

Judge Gerald W. Heaney, in dissent, said there was a third

choice. He would have allowed Mr. Singleton to be medicated

without fear of execution.

 

" I believe, " he wrote, " that to execute a man who is

severely deranged without treatment, and arguably

incompetent when treated, is the pinnacle of what Justice

Marshall called `the barbarity of exacting mindless

vengeance.' " Judge Heaney added that the majority's

holding presented doctors with an impossible ethical

choice.

 

Mr. Singleton killed a grocery store clerk in Arkansas in

1979 and was sentenced to death that year. His conviction

was affirmed in 1981 by the Arkansas Supreme Court.

 

In 1986, the United States Supreme Court held in an opinion

by Justice Thurgood Marshall, that the execution of the

insane was barred by the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits

cruel and unusual punishment.

 

Mr. Singleton's mental health began to deteriorate in 1987.

He said he believed his prison cell was possessed by demons

and that a prison doctor had implanted a device in his ear.

 

 

In December 2001, he wrote to the appeals court to inform

it that he did not believe his victim was dead and that she

was " somewhere on earth waiting for me - her groom. "

 

Based on extensive medical evaluations describing Mr.

Singleton as psychotic, his lawyers have argued that he is

mentally incompetent and thus cannot be executed. Drugs

alleviate his symptoms, however, and Judges Wollman and

Heaney differed yesterday on whether they rendered Mr.

Singleton sane or merely masked his psychosis.

 

The Supreme Court has held that prisoners may be forced to

take antipsychotic medications in some situations.

Prisoners who are forced to take medications to ensure that

they are competent to stand trial are entitled to a hearing

to consider the medical appropriateness of the treatment,

the risk the defendant poses to himself and others, and the

drug's effect on the defendant's appearance, testimony and

communications with his lawyer.

 

The Supreme Court has not ruled on whether prisoners may be

medicated in order to make them competent to be executed.

 

Over the years, Mr. Singleton has sometimes taken

antipsychotic medication voluntarily and has sometimes been

forced to take it. Arkansas officials argued that Mr.

Singleton must be medicated because he posed a danger to

himself and to others.

 

Mr. Singleton's lawyers responded by saying, in Judge

Wollman's characterization, that forcible medication

" becomes illegal once an execution date is set because it

is no longer in his best medical interests. "

 

The majority decision yesterday said Mr. Singleton's

interest in being free of unwanted medication must be

balanced against society's interest in punishing criminal

offenders. It overturned a ruling by a three-judge panel of

the court, which had commuted Mr. Singleton's death

sentence because he could not understand his punishment

without being medicated.

 

Judge Heaney, in dissent, noted that the majority's

decision gave doctors hard choices.

 

" Needless to say, " he wrote of the majority's holding,

" this leaves those doctors who are treating psychotic,

condemned prisoners in an untenable position: treating the

prisoner may provide short-term relief but ultimately

result in his execution, whereas leaving him untreated will

condemn him to a world such as Singleton's, filled with

disturbing delusions and hallucinations. "

 

Judge Heaney's opinion was joined by three other judges.

Judge Diana Murphy dissented on a different ground. She

said the record was not clear on whether Singleton was

psychotic and that it was premature to take up the case.

 

The American Medical Association's ethical guidelines

prohibit giving medical treatment that would make people

competent to be executed, said Dr. Howard Zonana, who

teaches psychiatry and law at Yale.

 

" You can't treat someone for the purpose of executing

them, " he said.

 

Jeffrey Marx Rosenzweig, Mr. Singleton's lawyer, said that

he was considering asking the United States Supreme Court

to hear the case, which he said presented an important

question of constitutional law.

 

" To what extent, " he asked, " can a government take

invasive, involuntary action using medical personnel who

are sworn to heal, save and treat when the result of their

medical application and experience is not healing, treating

and saving but instead has the result of causing

execution? "

 

Kelly Kristine Hill of the Arkansas attorney general's

office, who represented the state, said the court's ruling

was limited and correct.

 

" The ethical decisions involving doctors are difficult

ones, " she acknowledged, " but they are not ones for the

courts. "

 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/11/national/11DEAT.html?

ex=1045971828 & ei=1 & en=ae9a4c7aca257d7b