Arkansas executes mentally ill man

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3890365/

A mentally ill man whose lawyers had argued the state couldn’t legally execute him was put to death Tuesday night for the 1979 murder of a grocer who befriended him.

Charles Singleton, 44, was pronounced dead after receiving an injection of drugs in what was scheduled to be a back-to-back, double execution until a federal judge ruled that a second Arkansas inmate could appeal.

"I was going to speak but I wrote it down,” Singleton said when asked for his last words. “I’ll leave it up to the warden.”

Prison officials later provided a copy of Singleton’s rambling statement.

“The blind think I’m playing a game. They deny me, refusing me existence. But everybody takes the place of another. You have taught me what you want done — and I will not let you down. God bless you,” it read in part.

[IndianaGreen]

1. America is among the few countries that executes children and...

the mentally ill. We are no better than the Third Reich Germans that euthanized those they saw as weak.

[Kool Kitty]

6. Makes you proud, doesn't it?

I think this is a disgrace.

[saigon68]

12. Check out his picture

The Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, had refused to issue a stay of execution.




There's something else at work here

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3374831.stm

But last year, the 8th Circuit federal court ruled that Arkansas could forcibly medicate Singleton. Handing down its decision, the court said that "eligibility for execution is the only unwanted consequence of the medication".

[IndianaGreen]

2. Executing the Mentally Ill (Human Rights Watch)

Executing the Mentally Ill
By Alison Hughes

March 26, 2003

The voices and hallucinations began to plague James Colburn when he was a teenager. Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, he received only sporadic treatment (his family depleted their savings in an effort to help him), spent time in and out of mental hospitals, and attempted suicide over a dozen times. One night in 1994, while racked with hallucinations that told him to harm himself and others, James Colburn strangled and stabbed Peggy Murphy to death. On March 26, the state of Texas is scheduled to execute him by lethal injection.

In Texas as throughout the country, the mentally ill can be prosecuted, convicted and punished for criminal conduct unless deemed "mentally incompetent." The standard for mental incompetence has become so high, however, that as a practical matter a person with mental illness will face trial (and execution, if convicted of a capital crime) unless he thinks he is Napoleon or God. An estimated five to ten percent of death row is comprised of prisoners with a serious mental illness.

All murders are horrific. None should be committed with impunity. The families of victims and society at large rightfully seek justice by securing the conviction and punishment of those who murder. But if all murders are equal in the sense that a life has been taken wrongly, all murderers are not equal. They differ, most crucially, in their blameworthiness. James Colburn did not kill out of hatred for the victim. He did not kill for pay. He killed out of illness, not evil. As blameworthiness varies, so should punishment.

http://hrw.org/editorials/2003/us032603.htm

[truthisfreedom]

3. what? they didn't make him all better before they killed him?

hmm. seems downright mean.

[OneBlueSky]

4. as I recall, Bill Clinton refused to stop the execution . . .

of a mentally ill man during his first campaign . . . it was the one thing I found most disturbing about him at the time . . .

[alwynsw]

8. See post 7

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

11. Exactly..ran home after the Dem convention to witness his execution

you know...it isn't centrist if you're not "tough on crime" AKA code for lock up all the black folks..that really gets that centrist white male vote :D

[saigon68]

13. Wasn't he the Guy who wanted to save his PIE

To eat, later in the day?

Also see the picture above.


"lock up all the black folks.." Hell in this case Huckabee wants to "kill all the black folks"

This action will surely "gets that centrist white male vote".

[IndianaGreen]

10. Clinton executed Ricky Ray Rector, who had been lobotomized

True to form: Clinton rejects moratorium on death penalty
By Kate Randall
19 February 2000

Clinton himself presided over four executions as governor of Arkansas. In January 1992 he flew back to Arkansas in the midst of his first presidential campaign to approve the execution of Ricky Ray Rector. Rector, who had blown away part of his brain in a failed suicide attempt, was so mentally impaired that he asked that his desert be put aside so he could eat it after his execution.

Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which severely restricts the right of death row inmates to file federal habeas corpus petitions. Also under his administration, in 1996 Congress eliminated funding for the 20 Death Penalty Resource Centers which provided legal services for poor defendants.

All of the major contenders for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations support the death penalty.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/exec-f19.shtml

[Manix]

5. Did Bush get a chance to mock him first?

He used to take great delight in this in Texas.

[Erika]

9. May God Forgive Them

Ill is ill but the rabid right wingers want only blood. Including the Bushs.

[alwynsw]

7. Sounds similar to Rickey Ray Rector.

According to officials present at his execution, he asked to save the pecan pie from his last meal for "later". According to prison psychologists and psychiatrists, he had no concept of death; theregore he had no concept of what had happened to the people he killed.

Business as usual in Arkansaas.

[dbt]

14. And what, exactly, was solved by the execution?

I'm sure this will be a great deterrent to the mentally ill who are contemplating glamorous lives of crime...

:eyes:
dbt