Bowser Commission Formed, Members Announced

The Indiana General Assembly recently announced the members of the Bowser Commission, a group of Indiana legislators assigned to examine mental illness and death penalty sentencing in Indiana--carrying out the good work and fulfilling the moral vision of the late Indiana Senator, Anita Bowser.

On February 28, the Indiana Senate passed a resolution urging the Legislative Council to create the Bowser Commission - at a time when Senator Bowser's cancer battle was growing in seriousness. She passed away just days later. Before her illness, she had attempted to pass legislation barring execution of the mentally ill.

ND ASK applauds this step toward the work Senator Bowser hoped to see completed, in the naming members of the Commission, which will be active through November 1. We await the findings of their work, trusting that the injustice of sentencing the mentally ill to death will surface and influence future Indiana law.

See previous posts regarding Senator Bowser and the creation of the Bowser Commission by clicking the label, "Bowser," below.

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The Panetti Ruling and Timberlake's Case

In January, Indiana inmate Norman Timberlake received a stay of execution after it was found that executing him before the Supreme Court heard the Scott Panetti case would be unjust and, dependent on the Court's decision, potentially unconstitutional. The June ruling of the Court re-asserts a 1986 decision, stating that in order to be executed, a convicted murderer must be able to recognize the relation between their crime and their pending death. According to this ruling, Timberlake's death sentence should be overturned, as his execution would prove a violation of our nation's principles.

Objections to the execution of Panetti, whose mental insanity includes a delusion that he is being killed to keep him from preaching the gospel, were considered parallel to those surrounding Timberlake--a paranoid schizophrenic who thinks that he is being tortured daily by a machine that will kill him to keep him silent.

The Indiana Supreme Court, in ruling that it could not allow Timberlake to be executed until Panetti was decided on
and various questions about mental illness and qualifications for the death penalty answered, provided an opportunity for justice that no lower court in the state's system afforded Timberlake.

ND ASK will monitor and report on any future hearings in Timberlake's case. It is crucial that his death sentence be overturned in light of the Panetti ruling, and we must work to ensure that the Supreme Court's recent decision takes effect in Indiana.

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Supreme Court blocks execution of Texas Inmate Scott Panetti

On June 28, the Supreme Court issued a decision overturning the death sentence of Texas death row inmate Scott Panetti. The justices ruled that Panetti, who has insisted during various stages of his capital trial and imprisonment that he is being punished for preaching the Gospel, had not been shown to have sufficient understanding of what he was being put to death for.

Since the 1986 Supreme Court case of Ford v. Wainright, the execution of the mentally insane has been constitutionally barred. But the standard for determining competency has not been laid out beyond the assertion that the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment requires that a defendant who is to be executed must be able to recognize the relationship between his crime and his sentence.

Panetti killed his wife’s parents in 1992. Now 49 years old, he remains on death row in Texas. A schizophrenic who served as his own lawyer in court, often amounting to an incoherent and outrageous defense, Panetti claims that his body has been taken over by an alter-ego and that demons are bent on killing him for his Christian beliefs.

Medical records demonstrate that during the decade preceding his crime, Panetti had been hospitalized 14 times for schizophrenia, manic depression, hallucinations and delusions. He nailed shut the curtains of his house, buried his furniture and threatened his family—claiming to have seen visions of the devil. In 1995, after winning approval from a Texas trial judge to represent himself in court, Panetti repeatedly tried to subpoena Jesus and donned an array of costume-like attire (including purple western shirts and cowboy hats) in the courtroom. It was the jury of this trial that convicted Panetti in 90 minutes and sentenced him to death.

Panetti’s long and turbulent history in the capital process, a 15-year proceeding, has fueled criticisms of the courts and trial system in Texas, where it is now clear that at least one insane man has represented himself. The ruling overturning his death sentence is, as executive director of Amnesty International Larry Cox commented last week, “a much-needed step toward a more humane America.”

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