Texas Tests Limits of Death Penalty With Mentally Ill Man on Death Row: “[The] applicant is clearly ‘crazy,’ but he is also ‘sane’ under Texas law.” – News

Content caution: self-hurt, suicide, violence

Maurie Levin, the lawyer representing dying row inmate Andre Thomas, mentioned what it is like seeking to keep in touch together with her shopper. “There is nothing that is linear about Andre’s thinking,” Levin mentioned. “He lives in an alternate world and there’s no way to make rational sense of his understanding of what happened, or is happening. It makes no sense to me. It would make no sense to any of us.”

Thomas, 39 years previous, is indubitably one of essentially the most mentally unwell folks ever despatched to Texas’ dying row. During a psychotic wreck in his place of birth of Sherman in 2004, he murdered his estranged spouse, Laura Boren, their 4-yr-previous son, Andre Jr., and Boren’s 1-yr-previous daughter, Leyha Hughes, telling government he’d carried out so on orders from God. Reading a Bible in prison within the days following the murders, he plucked out his proper eye. In 2008, 3 years after being sentenced to dying, he plucked out his closing eye – and ate it – to stay the federal government from seeing his ideas.

Since blinding himself, Thomas has been held on the Wayne Scott Unit, a jail southwest of Houston that homes the state’s maximum mentally unwell inmates. He continues to listen to voices and spot visions. Levin has data appearing that throughout the closing six months, Thomas has advised jail employees that he has a “superhuman mind,” that he sees photographs of the “Godhead” and pyramids, and that he is “one with the mind of God.” After he attempted to chop his neck with a sharpened spoon closing yr, a jail physician reaffirmed Thomas’ longtime analysis of schizophrenia.

Texas jail officers know that Thomas is insane. After all, they dangle him in a psychiatric facility and feed him antipsychotics. However, they’re going to kill Thomas if they are allowed to; till a number of weeks in the past, he used to be scheduled for execution on April 5. The execution has been postponed for a minimum of 3 months to permit Levin to arrange arguments appearing that Thomas has no thought why he is to be done – in different phrases, that killing him would violate the regulation. But the regulation is a mutable factor. It is what the courts say it is. Texas has done many mentally unwell folks. As unwell as Thomas is, there is no ensure he would possibly not be subsequent.

Voices, Visions, and Murder

Thomas used to be born in 1983 to a circle of relatives riddled with psychological sickness. He used to be the youngest of six sons and grew up very deficient. Often, the youngsters had no parental supervision. Sometimes that they had no operating water and electrical energy.

Thomas started consuming on the age of 10, along with his oldsters’ encouragement. He also started listening to voices and made the primary of what could be many suicide makes an attempt. Another of those got here at age 13, when his mom mentioned she wanted she’d aborted him. Thomas’ father described it: “He went to my sink and got a butcher knife and began sawing on his wrist. I told him, ‘Hell, if you want to kill yourself go out on the freeway and jump in front of a 18-wheeler.’ He continued to cry and saw on his arm, so I knew he was serious. So I told him he needed to make long cuts down his arm so it would split open if he really wanted to kill himself.”

At 15, Thomas started a courting with a white lady, Laura Boren, who used to be the similar age; that they had a son by means of age 16. Thomas were given a GED and took a role. On his 18th birthday he and Boren married. They separated inside a yr.

By then, the voices in Thomas’ head had transform continual and hectoring. At instances, they drove him to tears. He was obsessive about the Book of Revelations and the buck invoice, which he believed contained a code explaining the which means of existence. He knew one thing wasn’t proper and advised family and friends he wanted assist.

Three weeks ahead of his crime, a chum took Thomas to a psychological well being hospital. “Life is too much for me and I want to die right now,” he advised the workforce. They urged him to visit the emergency room. Two days ahead of the crime, Thomas stabbed himself within the chest and his mom took him to the health facility. The physician who tested him described Thomas as paranoid, hallucinating, and suicidal but left him by myself whilst he finished an Emergency Detention Order. Thomas walked out.

The subsequent morning Thomas carried 3 knives to Laura Boren’s trailer. With one, he killed Boren, satisfied she used to be Jezebel, the spouse of Satan. Using a 2d knife to stay the blood of the sufferers separate, he killed Andre Jr., believing he used to be the Antichrist. Thomas used the closing knife to kill Boren’s 1-yr-previous daughter Leyha, believing she used to be a demon. He lower the hearts out of the youngsters and tried to chop out Boren’s middle. He then stabbed himself within the chest and lay subsequent to Boren, anticipating to die.

When he did not, he filled the hearts in his pocket and confessed the murders to Sherman regulation enforcement, announcing God had commanded them. As he sat in prison, Thomas learn a Bible passage, Matthew 5:29, the place Jesus preaches, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out.” Using his hands, Thomas pried out his proper eyeball. He used to be taken to a psychiatric jail, the place he used to be identified with paranoid schizophrenia and given massive doses of antipsychotics. After 47 days he used to be pronounced sane sufficient to be attempted for capital homicide.

Thomas’ court docket-appointed lawyers argued on the resulting trial that he used to be blameless by means of explanation why of madness. They didn’t, then again, argue that he used to be incompetent to face trial within the first position. Accordingly, the court docket didn’t come to a decision whether or not he used to be sane sufficient to face trial; actually, no court docket has ever dominated on whether or not he is sane.

The Grayson County prosecutors conceded that Thomas used to be psychotic on the time of the murders but mentioned he had brought about his psychosis by means of consuming alcohol and cough drugs. They disregarded the gouging out of his eye as an impulsive act. After Thomas used to be discovered responsible by means of the all-white jury, his lawyers failed to totally describe his upbringing and historical past of psychological sickness all through the sentencing portion of the trial.

“The jury was not given the information that would have helped them to see Mr. Thomas’ struggles or humanity,” Levin later mentioned. “Without anything close to a full picture of Mr. Thomas’ mental illness and the neglect and abuse that exacerbated it – which would likely have led the jury to see Mr. Thomas as deserving of compassion – the jury sentenced him to death.”

Crazy but Sane

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Thomas’ attraction of his dying sentence in 2008, as they do within the overwhelming majority of capital appeals introduced ahead of them. “This is a sad case,” Judge Cathy Cochran wrote, whilst claiming, reasonably unusually, that “reasonable people might well differ on the questions of whether [he] was sane at the time he committed these murders or competent at the time he was tried.” The pass judgement on mentioned those the most important questions were “appropriately addressed” on the trial. One sentence from the ruling stood out: “[The] applicant is clearly ‘crazy,'” Cochran wrote, “but he is also ‘sane’ under Texas law.”

Cochran may just make that observation as a result of Texas and the United States have by no means outlined madness for functions of capital punishment. The simplest steerage on the subject comes from the 1986 Supreme Court choice in Ford v. Wain­wright, which simply calls for that those that are done perceive why they’re being killed. Texas has killed many mentally unwell prisoners for the reason that Ford choice, and it continues to take action. Last yr, the state killed Tracy Beatty, identified as a paranoid schizophrenic. Just two weeks in the past, it killed Gary Green, also identified with schizophrenia.

One month after Cochran wrote that Thomas used to be loopy but sane, Thomas plucked out his closing eyeball and ate it. He used to be taken to the Wayne Scott Unit. During 14 years of solitary confinement there, he has been fed day-to-day doses of benztropine, olanzapine, and different medicine. But he continues to listen to voices and spot visions. “His delusions have not changed,” Levin mentioned. “He has very consistent kinds of hallucinations. He has consistently heard voices that often tell him the same thing. He certainly hasn’t gotten any better.”

Levin has represented Thomas since he entered Wayne Scott and has filed a wide range of appeals with state and federal courts in that point. In 2022, the Supreme Court declined to believe her most up-to-date argument demonstrating racism at Thomas’ trial. Shortly in a while, the Grayson County district lawyer’s place of business requested that Texas continue with Thomas’ execution. It used to be set for April 5.

On March 7, a district court docket in Grayson County postponed the execution to permit Levin time to make the argument that has been staring Texas officers within the face all alongside – that Thomas is incompetent for execution by means of explanation why of madness. Levin mentioned she’s going to almost definitely provide her case to the court docket in June.

Clemency and Decency

Proving {that a} defendant is incompetent for execution is tough. So Levin has also offered a clemency petition to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, asking that they counsel to Gov. Greg Abbott that he shuttle Thomas’ sentence to existence in jail. Seventy-seven of the country’s main psychological well being pros have signed on to the petition; so have 100 Texas religion leaders, representing many religions and denominations.

Greg Hansch, government director of the Texas bankruptcy of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is one of the ones asking Abbott to spare Thomas’ existence. “We strongly believe that capital punishment should be taken off the table for [people with] severe mental illnesses,” Hansch mentioned. “We’ve done so for juveniles, we’ve done so for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and it’s time that we bring Texas law into alignment with the protections that have been put in place for other vulnerable populations.”

Hansch is supporting Texas House Bill 727, which might exempt folks convicted of a capital crime from the dying penalty in the event that they suffered from psychosis because of schizophrenia or different serious psychological sickness on the time of their offense. But if HB 727 passes, it’ll no longer be retroactive, so it might no longer have an effect on Thomas.

The Rev. Jaime Kowlessar, senior pastor of Dallas City Temple, is also asking that Abbott shuttle Thomas’ sentence. It’s a protracted shot, but he is urging the governor, who professes to be a Catholic, to learn the Bible tale contained in Mark 5. In it, a person possessed by means of demons falls on the ft of Jesus and begs for mercy. Jesus heals the person by means of exorcising his demons. “When Jesus met this young man, his first word wasn’t to execute him,” Kowlessar mentioned. “It was to have compassion and mercy.”