US anti-psychotic could prove a lethal injection

Mental Health Nursing,  Mar 2003  

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There are few regimes in the world which execute those who have a clinical mental illness.

Apart from the injustice of the act, there is a question mark about a punishment which the victim simply does not understand. This was the dilemma facing a US appeal court in St Louis Missouri concerning a convicted murderer Charles Singleton who is severely psychotic and believes his cell is inhabited by demons.

Only when he is receiving appropriate medication can Mr Singleton make some sense of the world. Now the court has declared that he should be forcibly medicated to ensure that he is 'fit' for execution.

One judge, in a minority, said the decision was 'exacting mindless vengeance'.

Mr Singleton stabbed and killed a shopworker in 1979. Two years ago an appeal court decided that execution, given his condition would be 'cruel and unusual punishment' and sentenced him to life in prison without parole. But the recent decision puts him back on death row.

Charles Singleton was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia 20 years ago. In a dissenting statement, judge George Heaney said: 'Singleton is not cured: his insanity is merely muted, at times by the powerful drugs he is forced to take.

This leaves doctors treating psychotic, condemned prisoners in an untenable position: treating the prisoner may provide short term relief but ultimately result in his execution, whereas leaving him untreated will condemn him to a world...filled with delusions and hallucinations.'

The appeal court in 2001 said it was not sure he would understand the nature of the execution even when he was on medication. Mr Singleton wrote to the court informing the justices that his murder victim was was alive and 'somewhere on earth waiting for me'.

His lawyer is considering an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Copyright Community Psychiatric Nurses Association Mar 2003
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