US clears drug cure for killers on death row

Convicted murderers with severe mental health problems can be forced to take drugs that would make them clinically sane so that they can be executed, the US supreme court has ruled.

Opponents of the death penalty yesterday described the court's decision to uphold an earlier ruling on the issue - without debating it - as shocking.

The case concerns Charles Singleton who, in 1979, killed a grocery shop worker in Arkansas. He was convicted and sentenced to death later that year.

While awaiting execution, Singleton's mental health deteriorated to such an extent that he believed his victim was still alive, that the authorities had implanted a device in his ear and that his jail cell was under the control of demons.

Because a prisoner has to be technically sane before being executed, the court was asked to decide whether Singleton could be given psychotropic drugs to qualify to be put to death. His lawyers argued that the drugs should not be administered as the only medical purpose of doing so would be to prepare the prisoner for execution.

This year an appeals court in St Louis ruled that it was acceptable to give Singleton the drugs, although the decision was not unanimous. A dissenting judge, Gerald Heaney, said: "I believe that to execute a man who is severely deranged without treatment and arguably incompetent when treated is the pinnacle of ... the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance." At issue is whether such action amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment" under the American constitution. In 1986 the supreme court ruled that it was cruel and unusual to execute someone if they did not know why they were being executed or even that they were about to be executed.

Another crucial concern is whether a doctor would administer the drug and what the ethical implications would be for the doctor. The ruling could mean that paramedics would have to be specially trained to give the medication.

Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre in Washington, said yesterday that because the supreme court had upheld the decision without a debate the door was open for a further appeal.

"It is somewhat shocking that someone whose mental condition is so bad that you have to pump them up, so to speak, so that you can put them on the table [is allowed to be executed]," Mr Dieter said. "It seems to be the epitome of cruel punishment and the invasion of the human body.

"I hope at some time there will be a debate [in the supreme court] and I hope that this will get a full hearing."

Mr Dieter said he was aware of only 3 or 4 prisoners who had been spared the death penalty because they were considered mentally incompetent. Many people on death row suffered from mental illness of some sort, ranging from depression and alcoholism to schizophrenia, but this did not often prevent their execution.

"I read a lot of mitigating circumstances and mental illness is often part of the description," Mr Dieter said.

In a separate death penalty dispute, there is growing debate about the lethal injection itself.

Medical experts have argued that while a person being executed may appear serene, it is possible they are in severe pain but unable to cry out because they have been paralysed. A case brought by a prisoner awaiting execution claims that pancuronium bromide, the chemical compound used in some states, leaves the prisoner conscious but unable to communicate.

Lethal injection is now the favoured method of execution in states which permit the punishment. Nebraska, which electrocutes prisoners sentenced to death, is the only one of the 38 states which have the death penalty not to use the method. In some states the prisoner is given a choice, which can include a firing squad (in Utah), a gas chamber or hanging.