Competency issue halts execution

AP ^ | 3.22.05

[ambrose]

March 22, 2005, 11:31PM

Competency issue halts execution

State says it will appeal the 11th-hour reprieve

By MICHAEL GRACZYK

Associated Press

HUNTSVILLE - As nearly three dozen employees and customers were held at gunpoint at his Fort Worth restaurant, manager Bob Read volunteered to accompany the robbers if they would spare everyone else. ADVERTISEMENT

The heroics cost him his life.

More than 15 years later, Steven Kenneth Staley, one of the men involved in the botched holdup of a Steak and Ale restaurant, was set to die tonight for Read's fatal shooting.

The execution was halted late Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Terry Means in Fort Worth.

Means was acting on an appeal from Staley's lawyer who argued the convicted killer is mentally incompetent and should not be put to death.

"Judge Means' order was that nobody's ever heard this guy's competency question," attorney Jack Strickland said.

The Texas Attorney General's Office, however, filed notice it planned to appeal the reprieve this morning to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

[Calusa]

They should get the husband to starve him to death.

[KC_Conspirator]

Means was acting on an appeal from Staley's lawyer who argued the convicted killer is mentally incompetent and should not be put to death.

Of course, now if this guy had not committed a crime and murdered someone, then he could be put to death.

[goldstategop]

Of course Terri Schiavo gets no such intricate last minute second-guessing from our federal courts like condemned murderers do. What's wrong with this picture?

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[The Great Yazoo]

the convicted killer is mentally incompetent and should not be put to death...

Ironic, isn't it!

[massgopguy]

Can't kill the mentally incompetent you say?

[yellowdoghunter]

These issues should be left to the state. The Fed. Gov. has no business in these matters.

[Fierce Allegiance]

Hipocrisy? Can't kill a criminal because he's mentally incompetent, but it's ok to starve and dehydrate to death a woman who has done nothing wrong?

WTF is wrong with this world? </rehtorical - not really looking for an answer>

[sandbar]

Ok, this guy CAN'T be put to death because he is mentally incompetant and he murdered someone but Teri gets put to death because she is mentally incompetant and HASN'T murdered someone.

I think the hand of God has been removed from this country. I say that will all honesty, this week has taken my faith of this being a protected nation.

[goldstategop]

Terri's "brain-dead" and one is mind-boggled over the enthusiastic rush to kill her. But a mentally retarded murderer deserves to be spared cause he doesn't know right from wrong. Why the hypocrisy?

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[the OlLine Rebel]

No.


PUT A "FEEDING TUBE" IN THE PRISONER, THEN THE EXECUTION WILL PROCEED.

[saveliberty]

Thomas Sowell wrote a column in the mid nineteen eighties that the definition of "competency" was "competence, as described by the incompetent."

[the OlLine Rebel]

"Means was acting on an appeal from Staley's lawyer who argued the convicted killer is mentally incompetent and should not be put to death."


Is that a reason not to be executed?

Can Terri be considered incompetent? Why not, they call her brain-dead, right? Then maybe she can LIVE!

[goldstategop]

Liberals accuse us of hypocrisy for dragging the federal courts into a review of Terri's case. Which the courts pre-emptorily rejected without a so much as a bye your leave. But the same liberals applaud the federal courts into holding up the state's execution of a mental idiot cause God knows - its a violation of his constitutional rights. What happens is innocent people have NONE. Welcome to the Brave New World of American Liberalism.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[MamaLucci]

Court bars executing retarded

In a landmark 6-to-3 decision, the US Supreme Court Thursday declared a constitutional prohibition on imposing capital punishment on convicted murderers and other capital defendants who are deemed to be mentally retarded. The court ruled that such death sentences amounted to a form of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

[goldstategop]

We need to get Terri to murder someone and have sentenced to be placed on Death Row. Then perhaps her life will finally be spared. We're living in an Alice Through The Looking Glass country on matters of life and death. Its crazy.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[goldstategop]

How Clintonian. It all depends on the meaning of the word, "retarded."

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[FourtySeven]

The irony is beyond the pale. (or is it "pail"?)

Anyway, it really is.

[ErnBatavia]

http://www.deadmaneating.com/dmearch.html

[the OlLine Rebel]

These lib mindsets will have you thinking an ox is a bull, a bull is a cow and a cow is a horse.


Ah, common sense.....