Answer Key
Arkansas prepares to execute mentally ill inmate
The [voices] inside Charles Singleton's head vary, in volume and number, regardless of whether he has taken medication for his schizophrenia. Inside his Arkansas cell, he says he can often hear voices that speak of killing him. Singleton's attorney says his 44 year-old client welcomes the scheduled Tuesday night execution he faces because he is tired of living [with] mental illness. The attorney says Singleton understands that he will be put to death and why – the current legal standards to qualify for execution.
Singleton, however, is rational only when he is on medication. It is that fact, [as well as] an 18 year old Supreme Court ruling barring execution of the mentally ill, that his attorney, some members of the legal and medical communities and death penalty critics point to in their opposition to Singleton's execution. "If he is artificially made to be competent, then the situation is an oxymoron, it doesn't make logical sense" said Ronald Tabak, a New York-based attorney who has represented clients in death penalty [cases] . But the prosecutor in the Singleton case claims the defendant was clearly sane at the time of the crime, and therefore unaffected by the Supreme Court ruling. "I do not feel he is being medicated in order to put him to death," said John Frank Gibson. "He's being medicated to keep him healthy, to control him."
Singleton was 19 when he stabbed Mary Lou York to death while [robbing] a small grocery store in Hamburg, Arkansas. She identified him before she died. In 1979 he was convicted and sentenced to death. A prison psychiatrist in 1997 diagnosed Singleton as suffering [from] paranoid schizophrenia. That same year, a prison medication review panel ordered Singleton to take antipsychotic drugs after finding he posed a danger to himself and to others. After the medication [took] effect, Singleton's psychotic symptoms decreased and Arkansas made plans to execute him. Singleton's attorneys filed a lawsuit arguing the state could not constitutionally restore his client's mental competency through the use of forced medication and then execute him. In October 2001, a panel of the 18th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Singleton be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The state of Arkansas appealed, and last February a sharply divided full 8th Circuit Court reversed the decision. The court said that since Singleton now voluntarily takes medication, the side effect of sanity should not [affect] Singleton's sentence. Last October, the Supreme Court declined without comment to hear the Singleton case.
A majority of Americans have consistently supported the use of the death penalty since its reinstatement in the 1970s. In a Gallup Poll last October 6-8, 64 percent of Americans surveyed said they supported the death penalty, while 32 percent opposed it. The poll surveyed 1,019 people. But polls also show that the issue of mental [illness] sharply affects public opinion. According to a Gallup Poll taken in 2002, 75 percent of those surveyed opposed executing mentally ill inmates, while 19 percent supported it.
The son of the victim in the Singleton case says the insanity question is just a ploy. "I don't believe it," said Charles York. "It's just something they use to prolong the case and to keep it in the court system." Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee could still stop the execution if he decides to. Additionally, Singleton's attorney Jeff Rosenzweig last week obtained permission from his client to examine his medical records, but on Monday he said that [unless] Singleton's condition drastically deteriorates, it is unlikely he would file an appeal asking a judge to find Singleton incompetent.