The chamber has repeatedly passed legislation in recent sessions eliminating the death penalty in cases of severe mental illness, but the issue has not gained traction in the more conservative Senate.
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In recent months, high-profile cases of schizophrenic prisoners facing execution have focused renewed attention on Texas’ long-standing habit of sentencing people with mental illnesses to death. U.S. Supreme Court precedent prohibits states from executing people who don’t have a “rational understanding” of why the state plans to kill them, but it does not specifically ban killing those with severe mental illness, as it does those with intellectual disabilities. And as is documented in nearly 30 years of attempting to execute Panetti, the state of Texas still seeks to carry out death sentences of the severely mentally ill.
If jurors decide a defendant qualifies as severely mentally ill, and the person is convicted of capital murder, the judge would impose an automatic sentence of life without parole. Otherwise, a separate sentencing hearing would be held to decide on either a sentence of life or death, as is typical in Texas death penalty trials.
Slaton claimed that mental health examinations which diagnose people with mental illnesses are not medical science. He also said mass murderers are regularly diagnosed as mentally ill and would therefore be exempt from a death sentence.
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