Post by WaTcHeR on Apr 13, 2006 8:30:15 GMT -5
04/13/2006 - FORT WORTH - A judge who stopped an execution because the inmate was mentally ill has ruled that he should be physically forced to take anti-psychotic medication.
Judge Wayne Salvant issued the order Tuesday in response to a request from prosecutors to medicate Steven Kenneth Staley so he can be executed. The decision drew a sharp reaction from Staley's attorney.
"The whole idea of holding somebody down and injecting them so that we can then say, with a straight face, this person is now competent so we can kill them, I think that smacks of an Orwellian-Soviet-style approach to criminal justice," Jack Strickland said in Wednesday editions of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "Most people, even conservatives, would find that very offensive. It bothers me."
Prosecutors Chuck Mallin and Jim Gibson told the newspaper they filed the motion to forcibly medicate Staley in part to carry out a jury's decision that Staley should die for the slaying of a Fort Worth restaurant manager during a botched robbery. Staley, 43, refuses to take his medication.
During the hearing in Fort Worth, Staley picked at his unruly hair and red jumpsuit and mumbled nonsensical phrases.
Salvant signed an order in February canceling the punishment after psychologists for the inmate and prosecutors determined Staley was incompetent.
In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment clause bars states from executing prisoners who aren't aware of the punishment they are about to face and don't understand why they are facing it.
Staley, of Denver, was convicted of the death of Robert Read, 35, who was fatally shot after he was taken hostage following the robbery at his Steak and Ale restaurant Oct. 14, 1989. Staley had escaped from a Denver halfway house about a month earlier.
In March 2005, he came within about five hours of execution before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stopped the punishment after appeals were raised challenging the instructions given to jurors at Staley's capital murder trial.
Judge Wayne Salvant issued the order Tuesday in response to a request from prosecutors to medicate Steven Kenneth Staley so he can be executed. The decision drew a sharp reaction from Staley's attorney.
"The whole idea of holding somebody down and injecting them so that we can then say, with a straight face, this person is now competent so we can kill them, I think that smacks of an Orwellian-Soviet-style approach to criminal justice," Jack Strickland said in Wednesday editions of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "Most people, even conservatives, would find that very offensive. It bothers me."
Prosecutors Chuck Mallin and Jim Gibson told the newspaper they filed the motion to forcibly medicate Staley in part to carry out a jury's decision that Staley should die for the slaying of a Fort Worth restaurant manager during a botched robbery. Staley, 43, refuses to take his medication.
During the hearing in Fort Worth, Staley picked at his unruly hair and red jumpsuit and mumbled nonsensical phrases.
Salvant signed an order in February canceling the punishment after psychologists for the inmate and prosecutors determined Staley was incompetent.
In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment clause bars states from executing prisoners who aren't aware of the punishment they are about to face and don't understand why they are facing it.
Staley, of Denver, was convicted of the death of Robert Read, 35, who was fatally shot after he was taken hostage following the robbery at his Steak and Ale restaurant Oct. 14, 1989. Staley had escaped from a Denver halfway house about a month earlier.
In March 2005, he came within about five hours of execution before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stopped the punishment after appeals were raised challenging the instructions given to jurors at Staley's capital murder trial.