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This morning, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals curtailed the death machine that is the Texas justice system in an opinion concerning a death penalty case out of Tarrant County.
It beings:
In this case, we are asked to decide whether state or federal law disallows the execution of a mentally ill inmate who was previously found incompetent to be executed and later became competent only after he was involuntarily medicated pursuant to a court order . . . . [W]e hold that the trial court's order mandating involuntary medication of appellant was not permitted under the competency-to-be-executed statute and did not meet the requirements of other statutes that may permit involuntary medication. Because the trial court lacked authority to render it, we vacate the trial court's involuntary-medication order. Furthermore, we determine that, but for that unauthorized order, the evidence conclusively shows that appellant is incompetent to be executed, and, therefore, we also vacate the trial court's order finding appellant competent to be executed.
The trial court's decision to drug the guy so he could be executed even caught my attention in 2006.
