Panetti is aware that the state claims that it intends to execute him because he committed two murders. The issue in the case was whether he can be executed if, as some experts assert, he believes that the state’s real reason for executing him is to keep him from preaching the gospel.
Panetti has suffered from schizo-affective disorder for years. A mental health professional stated that, as part of his delusion, Panetti believes that his execution is a “part of spiritual warfare.”
The Texas state court refused to allow Panetti to offer proof of his mental incompetence. In fact, the state court did not even allow a competency hearing. While denying him his right to a hearing, the court denied all of his motions, including funds for a mental health expert.
Instead, the Texas court stated it would rule on his motions only if the state-appointed mental health experts said that Panetti was unable to understand that he was going to be executed and why. The Supreme Court held that the question of competence must not end there. According to Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion, Ford includes a requirement that the condemned person have a rational understanding of why he will be executed. The Court remanded the case back to the District Court for a fair determination of whether Panetti has a rational understanding of why Texas intends to execute him.
Justice Thomas dissented joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Alito.
The problem of prosecutorial misconduct was in the national spotlight when North Carolina district attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred after his mishandling of the Duke lacrosse rape case. In TomPaine.com, Christopher Hill and William Webster of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project (CPP) point out that defendants in death penalty cases face even graver punishment:
While the Duke players faced a real risk of going to prison, there are other citizens of North Carolina and elsewhere across the country who have faced even greater risks because of prosecutorial misconduct, who have been sent to death row and even been executed. While former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong is no longer free to deny justice to other defendants, the prosecutors in many of those death penalty cases are still allowed to practice law. State ethics boards have, in effect, allowed death before disbarment.
You can read the full entry on TomPaine.com, and to learn more about the CPP’s work, go to their homepage, www.aclu.org/capital.
We must put this Congress on the spot now, not hand off these problems to the next administration. We must fight for legislation to restore our civil liberties. It’s time to shut down Guantanamo and transfer those detainees who should remain in custody to civilian courts or military courts martial, where they can be tried before impartial arbiters. It’s time to restore integrity to our laws — restore habeas corpus, stop the illegal spying, stop the torture — and recapture our moral legitimacy as a great democracy.
If you can’t make it to the Day of Action in person, you can still participate in this historic event by signing the petition and calling your members of Congress. And watch the live webcast of the event, which will feature speakers Patrick Leahy, Dennis Kucinich, Christopher Dodd, Tom Harkin, Jerrold Nadler, John Conyers, and many others. And Gabe Rottman from FindHabeas.com will be posting video blog entries of interviews with some of these speakers.
Now they may not look much like Woodward and Bernstein, but you’ve got to start somewhere! It remains to be seen what will result from the long bus ride, giving the fourteen and fifteen year old a couple of lessons on how to run a “Handycam” recorder (with batteries all re-charged and DVDs pre-formatted), and forcing them both to go on the internet for a few minutes to find out about the Military Commissions Act, loss of the right to habeas corpus and what “alternative interrogation techniques” really mean. But I told them they might be covering history in the making.
This past Saturday marked the 35th anniversary of Title IX, the landmark 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. Emily Martin, the deputy director of the Women’s Rights Project, marked the anniversary in HuffingtonPost.com by blogging about sex-segregated schools:
Despite Title IX’s statement that no one may be excluded from any educational activity based on sex, the new regulations permit coeducational schools such exclusion in a wide variety of circumstances. Because of these amendments, on the 35th anniversary of Title IX, hundreds of public schools across the country are now planning and instituting sex-segregated programs for the first time in memory.
Jesselyn McCurdy, legislative counsel for our Washington Legislative Office, blogged on HuffingtonPost.com on racial profiling:
By allowing racial and religious bias to decide who is detained by law enforcement, we betray that fundamental promise of equal protection under the law.
You can help end racial profiling by telling your Congresspersons to co-sponsor Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Representative John Conyers’ (D-MI) End Racial Profiling Act of 2007 (ERPA), which is expected to be introduced next week on June 21.
We thought it might be over but it looks like the Senate immigration bill is coming back with a vengeance. The White House and key senators from both parties have worked out a deal that would bring the bill back to the Senate floor possibly at the end of next week. This time around the bill stands a strong chance of passing, since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he wouldn’t bring it back to the floor if it didn’t.
Make no mistake about it, this is a horrible bill from a civil liberties perspective, and it’s going to get a lot worse. The base bill already contains a number of awful provisions that would undermine due process, infringe on the privacy of all Americans and expand the Real ID national identification card scheme.
As a part of the deal senators will vote on 22 amendments to the bill, including one offered by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that would require every American to carry a hardened social security card containing the cardholder’s biometric information (such as fingerprints or DNA). Reactionary proposals like these will do nothing to solve the problems of illegal immigration. They go against the values of our country and our Constitution.
The ACLU is supporting two good amendments , one offered by Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester of Montana that would strike the Real ID requirements from the bill. Sixteen states have already opted out of Real ID, setting a historic precedent for non-compliance with a federal mandate.
The other amendment that the ACLU is supporting, is offered by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Baucus (D-MT) and Barak Obama (D-IL) and would substitute a due process- and privacy-friendly Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS) plan for the one written by Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and the Department of Homeland Security that is already a part of the base bill. EEVS creates a vast federal database to verify the eligibility to work of all job applicants in America , including U.S. citizens. If the immigration bill passes as-is, we will all need to have our eligibility to work approved by the Department of Homeland Security every time we apply for a job.
It is urgent that you contact your senators and tell them to support both of these amendments. The votes are going to be close, so we need to make senators know Americans demand that they protect our rights and our privacy. We do need immigration reform , but not at this cost.
Our colleagues at the Drug Policy Alliance have been hard at work formulating a remedy for the Chronic Re-Election Paranoia (CREEP) syndrome that has befallen so many of our elected officials. After years of arduous research and painstaking clinical trials they’ve finally hit upon a failsafe solution: Incarcerex!
Incarcerex delivers fast-acting relief to politicians plagued by sagging polls, instantly imprisoning scores of non-violent offenders in the name of the drug war and persuading voters that we’re tough on crime. But make sure to read the fine print, “If you’re trying to balance the budget, keep families together or protect human rights, Incarcerex might not be right for you.”
