Competency's Role in Executions
Of all the rights protected by the American legal system, the right to life is the most fundamental and is thus protected in a myriad of ways. It also may be the most controversial, having the ability to spark furious debate on topics such as abortion, assisted suicide, and the death penalty. One important concept protecting the right to life in the death penalty arena is that the person awaiting execution must be competent to be executed.
Tennessee’s two-prong standard for determining whether or not a person is competent to be executed is currently at the forefront of an extremely controversial Tennessee murder case. In 1985, Gregory Thompson was convicted of murdering twenty-eight year-old Brenda Lane with a butcher knife. According to Thompson, he abducted and killed the victim so he could use her car because he believed a gang of Ku Klux Klan members was chasing him. Thompson has had an execution date set more than once, but his case remains unsettled because the issue of his competency to face execution keeps surfacing.
To be competent to face execution in Tennessee, a person must both understand that his execution is imminent and understand the reason for which he is being executed. In Mr. Thompson’s case, he has told psychologists and psychiatrists who examined him that an attempt at execution will not actually kill him but that he will survive the attempt and be retried for the crime at a later date by a professional jury. Mr. Thompson’s comments indicate that he not only fails to understand that his impending execution will end his life but also that he may not understand that he has been found guilty of a crime at all, instead believing that he has yet to face an appropriate jury.
Tennessee’s two-prong protection for those who are incompetent to face execution proves invaluable in cases like the one detailed above. Whether Mr. Thompson is competent will remain an issue in the case until he is either declared incompetent or finally faces execution. However, the right to life is too important, and the penalty of death far too severe, to allow the forfeiture of life by those who do not understand the process itself or the reasons behind their subjection to it. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently granted Mr. Thompson another opportunity to prove his incompetency, as Mr. Thompson’s mental status remains unresolved. The court’s holding is proof that Tennessee’s two-prong competency test is adequately protecting the most inviolable of rights in the face of uncertainty.
Sources: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090912/NEWS03/909120357/2066/Court+to+hear+Tennessee+death+row+inmate+Gregory+Thompson+s+case; http://www.gregorythompson.org/index.html
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