Texas - Order To Forcibly Medicate Killer Is Debated.
Sat Mar 3, 2007 1:13 am (PST)
Order to forcibly medicate killer is debated
By MELODY McDONALD
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
FORT WORTH -- For more than eight months, officials have been
forcibly injecting convicted murderer Steven Kenneth Staley with anti-
psychotic drugs that one day may make him sane enough to be executed.
Whether Staley deserves to die is not an issue -- that was decided
long ago by a Tarrant County jury and upheld by the appellate courts.
The controversy surrounding Staley now is a complex issue at the
forefront of a legal debate about the death penalty in the United
States: Is it constitutional to forcibly medicate a mentally ill
Death Row inmate to make him competent enough to be executed?
Staley's attorney, Jack Strickland, says forcibly medicating Staley,
44, is cruel and unusual punishment and should be stopped immediately.
Tarrant County prosecutor Chuck Mallin says forcibly medicating
Staley is necessary to control his psychosis and to carry out a
sentence imposed by a jury more than 15 years ago.
On Thursday, both sides argued the issue before the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals, which is expected to issue an opinion in the near
future.
The nine-judge panel heard the arguments before a standing-room- only
crowd in an auditorium at Texas Wesleyan School of Law in downtown
Fort Worth.
The state's highest criminal court occasionally travels from Austin
to law schools around the state to give students a chance to hear
arguments and see the criminal justice system at work.
Crime and punishment
On Oct. 14, 1989, Staley and two friends went to a Steak and Ale
restaurant in west Fort Worth and sat down to eat.
After finishing their meal, they pulled out semiautomatic weapons and
demanded access to the cash register and the safe. As customers and
employees huddled at the rear of the restaurant, an assistant manager
slipped out and called police.
A short time later, police surrounded the restaurant, and 35-year-old
Robert Read, the manager, offered himself as a hostage to spare the
others. The three took him up on his offer and held him at gunpoint
as they tried to escape.
When Read resisted after they tried to force him into a hijacked car,
he was fatally shot.
In April 1991, a Tarrant County jury sentenced Staley to death. Four
months later, he found himself on Death Row.
Confined to a tiny cell, Staley -- a Charles Manson look-alike who
suffers from a severe form of paranoid schizophrenia -- was prone to
lying in his urine-soaked cell and blackening his eyes by repeatedly
beating himself in the face.
Over the years, he has refused to take his medication because he
thinks he is being poisoned. He has been hospitalized up to 19 times.
Three times, Staley has managed to avoid execution after experts
determined that he is incompetent and doesn't understand why he is
being put to death.
Federal and state law prohibits the execution of an insane or
incompetent person.
Last year, Mallin and fellow prosecutor Jim Gibson filed a motion
asking state District Judge Wayne Salvant to forcibly medicate Staley
to restore his competence and carry out the jury's verdict.
Staley was moved to the Tarrant County Jail and continued to refuse
to take his medication. In April, after a long hearing in which
Staley picked at his hair and mumbled nonsensical phrases, Salvant
granted the motion -- marking what is believed to be the first time a
Texas judge has ordered an incompetent Death Row inmate to be
forcibly medicated.
Strickland responded by filing a flurry of legal paperwork, seeking
an emergency stay of Salvant's order. But his requests were denied.
During the week of June 5, according to court documents, Salvant's
order was carried out and officials began forcibly medicating Staley
in the Tarrant County Jail, where he remains today.
The appeal
During the hearing Thursday, Strickland asked the Court of Criminal
Appeals to stop Salvant's order until he has time to explore all his
legal options.
"If allowed to stand, it would be the first time such an order has
been found to be valid," Strickland said.
Strickland maintains that, in addition to being cruel and unusual,
forcibly medicating Staley is indecent; violates medical ethics as
well as Staley's rights to privacy and liberty; and produces
artificial competence with psychotropic drugs that have painful and
debilitating side effects.
Mallin, meanwhile, urged the court not to intervene, saying he
believes that it lacks jurisdiction to stop Salvant's order.
Mallin said that Staley suffers when he is unmedicated and that the
drugs' side effects do not outweigh their benefits. Treating Staley,
Mallin contended, is necessary and medically appropriate.
"When he takes it, he is competent," Mallin said. "It is by his own
volition that he has decided that he is going to be incompetent. "
Strickland and Mallin each received about 20 minutes to state their
cases but, most of the time, the judges peppered them with questions.
When one of the judges questioned whether they had authority to weigh
in on the issue at this stage, Mallin's reply drew laughs: "The
mountain came to Muhammad," he said, referring to the panel's trip
from Austin to Fort Worth.
"But I don't want to be rude and say you need to go home."
Strickland acknowledged that the case has entered uncharted waters.
He told the panel that if Salvant's order is stayed, it would let him
explore options that might include trying to commute Staley's
sentence to life in prison.
In his final words to the court, Strickland urged the judges not to
let Texas become the first state to forcibly medicate someone so he
is competent enough to be executed.
Staley believes that he works for the CIA, that judges and
prosecutors were conspiring to steal his car, and that the Prince of
Wales has a summer home in Huntsville and communicates with him
telepathically, Strickland said.
"We have an opportunity to do what is right, what is fair, what is
decent and what is humane, and that is not to execute a crazy
person," he said.
It could be months before the Court of Criminal Appeals issues its
opinion. Officials said the panel could decide that it doesn't have
jurisdiction and decline to get involved; could agree with Salvant
and allow the forcible medication to continue; could stop Salvant's
order; or could come up with another solution.
Regardless of the decision, one thing is certain: The issue is far
from over.
