Texas Tough

Since the Powell v. Alabama (1932) decision first granted capital defendants the right to counsel in the Scottsboro case, the Supreme Court has periodically ruled certain types of defendants beyond the reach of the noose and needle. Some twenty years ago in Ford v. Wainwright (1986), the Court barred executions of the mentally ill, but state courts, and Texas’s in particular, have set their own standards for mental incompetence, making it exceedingly difficult for defendants to escape capital punishment except in the most extreme cases of insanity. Today, however, amidst a flurry of right-wing rulings (overturning key enforcement provisions of Brown v. Board of Education, for example), the Supreme Court saved the life of one Scott Louis Panetti, who famously represented himself at trial wearing a purple cowboy outfit, and ordered lower courts to more seriously consider expert testimony on mental illness. The ruling marks the fourth straight rebuke of Texas’s courts by the Supremes this term—an astonishing record given the majority’s general eagerness to inject. For more information, see the Texas Defender Service, which helped take the case to the top.