AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE

AI Index: AMR 51/049/2004 (Public) -- News Service No: 059

USA: Another Texas injustice: Mentally ill man two months from execution The State of Texas is planning to kill another mentally ill man in its lethal injection chamber, Amnesty International warned today as it issued a new report on the case.

Kelsey Patterson is scheduled to be executed in Texas on 18 May for a double murder committed in 1992. He has long suffered from serious mental illness, and was first diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1981.

There is no doubt that Kelsey Patterson shot Louis Oates and Dorothy Harris, and there would appear to be little doubt that mental illness lay behind this tragic crime. He made no attempt to avoid arrest -- after shooting the victims, he put down the gun, undressed and was pacing up and down the street in his socks, shouting incomprehensibly, when the police arrived.

In 2000, a federal judge noted that "Patterson had no motive for the killings... he claims he commits acts involuntarily and outside forces control him through implants in his brain and body. Patterson has consistently maintained he is a victim of an elaborate conspiracy, and his lawyers and his doctors are part of that conspiracy. He refuses to cooperate with either; he has refused to be examined by mental health professionals since 1984, he refuses dental treatment, and he refuses to acknowledge that his lawyers represent him".

A jury found Kelsey Patterson competent to stand trial. Yet his behaviour at his competency hearing, and at the 1993 trial itself -- when he repeatedly interrupted proceedings to offer rambling narrative about his implanted devices and other aspects of the conspiracy against him -- provided compelling evidence that his delusions did not allow him a rational understanding of what was going on or the ability to consult with his lawyers.

In another indication of his delusional thinking, since learning of his execution date Kelsey Patterson has written various letters to judges and to the parole board, referring to the permanent stay of execution that he has received on grounds of innocence.

Kelsey Patterson's case raise wider questions about society's treatment of the mentally ill. His family had tried unsuccessfully to get treatment for him prior to his crime. If Kelsey Patterson is put to death, it would not be first time that the Texas system had, in effect, buried its own failure in its execution chamber. Larry Robison, who was executed in 2000, had suffered from paranoid schizophrenia long before committing the crime for which he was sentenced to die. His family had tried to obtain help for him, but were turned away because he had not yet turned violent. James Colburn was also a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic whose family had tried, unsuccessfully, to get appropriate health care before the murder for which he was sent to death row. He was executed in March last year. Last month, Scott Panetti received a 60-day stay of execution shortly before he was scheduled to be executed in Texas. He had been hospitalized for mental illness many times before the crime.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has repeatedly called for an end to the use of the death penalty against people with mental disorders. In the face of such resolutions, the USA's continuing use of the death penalty against the mentally ill is shameful.

See: Another Texas injustice: The case of Kelsey Patterson, mentally ill man facing execution, http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510472004

For further information, see also:

Time for humanitarian intervention: The imminent execution of Larry Robison ---- http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR511071999

James Colburn: Mentally ill man scheduled for execution in Texas http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR511582002