of Individuals with Severe Mental Illness: Courtrooms with Few - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Litigating Capital Cases of Individuals with Severe Mental Illness: Courtrooms with Few Protections Kathryn Kase T EXAS D EFENDER S ERVICE National Summit on Severe Mental Illness and the Death Penalty December 6-7, 2016 Georgetown University

The Seriously Mentally Ill are Not Safe in Pretrial Detention . . .or on Death Row • After years of hallucinations and hearing voices and five days after his arrest for Capital Murder, Andre Thomas read Matthew 5:29 and removed his right eye. • While on death row and in a psychotic state, he removed his left eye.

Courts are Too Willing to Allow the Seriously Mentally Ill to Represent Themselves Despite a history of paranoid schizophrenia and multiple hospitalizations, Scott Panetti was allowed to represent himself at his death penalty trial while wearing a cowboy outfit and after subpoenaing Jesus Christ and John F. Kennedy as witnesses.

Behavior Indicative of Serious Mental Illness does not Prevent Courts from Allowing Self-Representation James Calvert was allowed to continue to represent himself pre-trial and through the merits phase of his death penalty trial even after he: • Was delivered to court in a straight jacket, • Objected to admitting any document whose letters could be arranged to spell “truth”, • Started saying “Foxtrot” to signal objections.

Prosecutors Use Mental lllness to Argue for the Death Penalty “ If you believe he's paranoid and he believes that guards are out to get him or the police officers are out to get him or just that people are out to get him, then, clearly, there's a risk of violence . There's a risk that he is going to act on those impulses .” -- Wes Mau, prosecutor, State v. Randall Mays

SMI Scares Jurors into Voting for Death “ After the verdict, I spoke with a couple of jurors who had sat in Scott’s case. . . . [One juror] told me that the goofy things Scott said and did scared the jury. They knew he had a long term mental history, but because he scared them they voted for death .” -- S. Preston Douglass, Jr., former defense counsel, Panetti v. State