Paul Dennis Reid, a white man, faces execution on June 28 for the murder of Angela Holmes, 21, and Michelle Mace, 16, who were kidnapped from a Baskin-Robbins in Clarksville in April of 1997.  Reid was also convicted of killing three McDonald’s workers and two employees of Captain D’s in Nashville.  Reid was set to be executed by lethal injection in October 2005, but received a stay from the Tennessee Supreme Court.

Questions regarding Reid’s competency to be executed lie at the heart of his case.  Reid has a history of mental illness, but no court has found him to be mentally incompetent despite the evidence of such illness staring them in the face.  Notably, in a reply to the state’s opposition to Reid’s motion for a stay of execution in October of 2005 the Tennessee Supreme Court stated: “All forensic mental health evaluators who have examined Mr. Reid within the last several years have found him to be severely mentally ill and incompetent with regard to making legal decisions.”  Moreover, in a footnote to this statement, the Court noted that Reid is operating under a psychotic belief that he is being tortured by scientific technology and that the only way to escape the torture is to succumb to execution.  How can a court that recognizes the reality of Reid’s mental illness and incompetency allow Reid’s execution to move forward?  The Tennessee Supreme Court goes on to acknowledge the importance of competency, stating that it is a fundamental right, and that therefore Reid is entitled to the proper protection when the state proposes to take drastic action against him.  If this was a worthy reason to grant a stay in October, what has changed since then to allow the execution to proceed?

The execution of people with severe mental illness continues in the United States, despite its prohibition by international treaty.  There is no question that Reid is mentally ill. Although the U.S. Supreme Court’s Ford v. Wainwright decision forbids the execution of those who are so insane they are unable to comprehend their impending execution or the reasons for it, the responsibility of making this determination was left to the states.  However, the inherently problematic relationship between medicine and law has allowed states to continue to execute the mentally ill.  In other words, complicated medical definitions and diagnoses that do not coincide with legal definitions are often tailored to fit certain prosecutorial agendas.  The discrepancies between medical opinion and legal definitions regarding concepts of competency and insanity remain a significant source of contention, especially in the context of the death penalty.  Even in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decisions barring the execution of juveniles and the mentally retarded that give hope to the idea that the mentally insane will also soon be spared the death penalty, it clearly remains an uphill battle.  Undoubtedly there are still mentally retarded people being put to death as the problem of determining what constitutes mental retardation remains.  This makes the task of preventing the execution of the mentally insane all the more daunting since there is an even larger gray area and disagreement when determining mental illness than there is mental retardation.

In sum, Reid’s case exemplifies the pervasiveness of mental health issues in our criminal justice system and their troubling relationship to the death penalty in particular.  Under current law the mentally ill are not sufficiently protected.  The continued sentencing and execution of the mentally ill is further proof that the death penalty is not reserved for the “worst of the worst.”