From the "You-couldn't-make-it-up" files:

[zotz]

Arkansas can force a prisoner on death row to take antipsychotic medication to make him sane enough to execute

The New York Times reports:
"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.

Comments

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

Bog and fucking leg. I give up on the world. This, and the atrocity of miscarried 'justice' you wrote about on Sunday, is just too disgusting for words. What scares and sickens me the most is that both these actions aren't the actions of one twisted individual, but that whole groups of people must have come together to decide this, and nowhere was there a single voice of reason. Nowhere. Supposedly sane and responsible people have ratified this madness.

[dryad-wombat.livejournal.com]

I actually feel sick.

How entirely horrific.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Inefficient as well as unpleasant - he'd be just as dead if they just killed him straight off...

[(Anonymous)]

wait a sec...The guy killed this clerk in 1979 and was sentenced to death then. His sanity didn't start deteriorating until 1987. (Probably as a result of drinking Pruno.) Let's be clear: he was sane when he committed the murder and he was sane when he went to death row. That the man's view of reality has changed doesn't alter the reality. The State of Arkansas isn't just trying to find fun excuses to execute random crazy people. And while I agree that administration of the death penalty in these United States is a farce on many levels, I have to ask why it's somehow "more" cruel and unusual to execute an insane person than a sane one. Surely execution is no bed of roses for anybody.

-X.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Presumably it's not as much of a punishment if the prisoner is too nutzo to understand what's happening to them?
Frankly, that's the only argument I can see for doing it, which completely negates the apologists' conctant assertions that the death penalty is there to act as 'a deterrant'.

"pour encourager les autres" was never a smart idea anyway.

[zotz]

Firstly, it would be a total perversion of medical ethics. A physician's role is to act in the interest of their patients, not to enact social policy.

I have to ask why it's somehow "more" cruel and unusual to execute an insane person than a sane one.

The reason why it's illegal to execute somebody who is believed insane is that they're likely to be unable to properly understand what's happening to them and act rationally in their own defense - essentially the same reason why it's believed impossible for someone psychotic to plead and defend themselves rationally in a trial, whether or not their life's at stake.

[zotz]

I mentioned this to my dad on the phone this evening. He, of course, would be one of the doctors in question if there was capital punishment in Britain.

[(Anonymous)]

I get all that. I even agree with most of it. But this guy has already acted in his own defense, back when he was still sane. And he has continued to do so by insisting that his victim is still alive (not only did he not do it, but neither did anyone else?) He was sensible of his actions when he committed the crime and was sane when he stood trial. And he was sane for the next *seven years*. (Pruno will do that.)

At the point where they're strapping you into the chair, you have pretty much lost the capability to act in your own defense regardless of your sanity (or for that matter, innocence).

I do understand the plight of the doctors, and I think our whole penal system is a train wreck. But my feelings about this particular case are that if the man was sane when he committed the murder, I don't see why he shouldn't be sane when he's executed. That he is now insane has not changed the circumstances under which he committed the crime.

The reason he shouldn't be executed is not because his mental state has changed, but because nobody should be executed.

(Then we get to argue over whether we should spend tax money on his meds when he's in prison for life anyway...)

-Ximena