Is it permissible to involuntarily medicate a mentally ill death-row inmate to render him competent for execution? A 5-4 Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decided that it's not.
In a 5-4 decision issued on Sept. 11, the CCA vacated a Tarrant County trial court's orders allowing for the involuntary medication and execution of convicted murderer Steven Kenneth Staley. The trial court had deemed the death-row inmate incompetent to receive lethal injection when he was not taking medication but competent for execution when medicated.
Staley's court-appointed appellate lawyer, John W. Stickels of Stickels & Associates in Arlington, says this is the first time he halted an execution for a death-row client.
"I do not believe Mr. Staley will be executed," Stickels says.
But he adds, "I do not believe he will ever be released from death row, except to go to the hospital."
Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Charles James "Jim" Gibson, who argued for the state in Staley's appeal, says, "We are disappointed in the decision. We are probably going to ask them to reconsider. But we're still kind of taking a little bit of a breather and considering what we're going to do."
According to the majority opinion in Ex Parte Steven Kenneth Staley, a Tarrant County jury in 1991 found Staley guilty of capital murder after he and two others rounded up a group of employees at a restaurant, threatened them with firearms, took their possessions and killed the manager after taking him hostage.
At a 2006 competency hearing forensic psychologists testified that they had evaluated Staley as schizophrenic. The trial court found Staley incompetent to be executed after one forensic psychologist testified that Staley "had demonstrated numerous symptoms of psychosis over the course of many years, including self-inflicted injuries, grossly neglected personal hygiene, resting in his own excrement and urine, irregular eating and sleeping habits, including refusing food and fluids, delusions of paralysis, and lying on one spot in his cell so long as to rub a bald spot in the back of his head," and another said Staley spoke in a fictitious language or "word salad," the majority opinion states.
At a second competency hearing in 2012, however, one of those forensic psychologists testified that Staley was competent to be executed because Staley was taking Haldol, which was "beneficial to a patient who has the symptoms of schizophrenia. … " At the end of that hearing, the trial court agreed that Staley was competent to be executed and ordered the sentence be carried out.
Staley appealed to the CCA. Writing for the majority, CCA Judge Elsa Alcala notes that, "but for that unauthorized order" allowing involuntary medication of Staley, "the evidence conclusively shows that appellant is incompetent to be executed. … "
Alcala writes, "A plain reading of the competency-to-be-executed statute indicates that the trial court lacked the authority to order appellant involuntarily medicated."
The majority opinion rejects the state's argument that "the trial court had inherent or implied authority to enter the medication order as necessary to carrying out the sentence."
Dissents
In one of the two dissenting opinions in Staley, Presiding Judge Sharon Keller, joined by Judges Barbara Parker Hervey and Michael E. Keasler, concludes: "Even if the trial court lacked authority to medicate appellant, the only proper remedy would be for this Court to overturn the involuntary-medication order."
Keller adds, "As long as the death-row inmate is actually competent, he is, by statute, eligible for execution. If, as a result of the overturning of an involuntary-medication order, the death-row inmate becomes incompetent before he is executed, then a motion to stay his execution can be filed. … Defense counsel's creative argument obscures the fact that there is no justification for conflating the issue of authority to medicate with the issue of competence to be executed."
Judge Lawrence E. Meyers wrote a dissenting opinion, which Keller and Hervey also joined. In it, Meyers wrote: "The majority is looking at this case from the wrong direction. … The issue raised in this case is similar to the situation where a defendant is shackled during trial and complains on appeal that being forced to wear restraints violated his right to a fair trial. There is no statute that gives the judge the authority to restrain the defendant, but he has inherent authority to order that a defendant wear shackles if it is necessary to prevent escape or disruption by the prisoner or to protect the safety of the parties, witnesses, jury, and others who may be present in the courtroom. A defendant who was shackled at trial is entitled to relief only if he was restrained without justification and he shows that his right to a fair trial was violated by being forced to wear restraints in the presence of the jury."
Stickels says his client most likely will spend the rest of his life on death-row in a situation absurd enough for Kafka: If Staley accepts medication that improves his mental health, that improvement will lead to his execution.
In the next 15 days, the state may ask the court to reconsider the majority ruling, says Gibson.
Asked if he takes heart from the dissenting opinions, Gibson notes that, to obtain a reversal: "I'd have to change the mind of one of the others, too."
