This Wednesday, the state of Texas is scheduled to execute Kwame Rockwell, a severely schizophrenic man who doesn’t know why he is in prison. Rockwell, who has a lifelong history of several mental illness that predates the crime, suffers from fixed delusions that snakes and demons surround him and invade his body. The majority of his time on death row has been spent in a psychiatric unit, where he has been administered antipsychotic drugs as well as drugs used in the treatment of schizophrenia.
Attorneys for Mr. Rockwell have asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to halt next week’s execution in order to allow time for a full mental health evaluation of Rockwell. They argue that Rockwell’s execution would be unconstitutional given that his severe mental illness prevents him from having a rational understanding of the fact that he is scheduled to be executed on October 24 or the reason that he is to be executed.
In a new column for Pacific Standard Magazine (“Kwame Rockwell Will Be the Next Disabled Person Executed by America”), David M. Perry discusses why Rockwell’s case epitomizes deep problems with the death penalty:
“America still doesn't have clear protections for people with severe mental illness. [The Rockwell case] in Texas remind us of the unfortunate diagnostic limitations that protect only some people with disabilities from the death penalty...Severe schizophrenia and similar conditions are a fairly common mitigating factor in capital crimes, but there's no absolute standard requiring a court to assess mental disabilities or to take them into account during sentencing. In trial, Rockwell's lawyers didn't even raise the question of his mental disabilities, a fact that his appeal lawyers used as evidence of ‘ineffective counsel.’”
Perry’s piece raises important points about how the lack of a categorical exemption for defendants with severe mental illness can put the most vulnerable individuals like Rockwell at risk for execution. At the very least, Rockwell’s case merits a competency hearing in order to ensure that Texas does not put a severely mentally ill man to death in an unconstitutional execution.