This past week the state of Texas was scheduled to execute a severely mentally ill man.  Scott Panetti has suffered from schizophrenia and other mental illness most of his life.  In 1992 he went off his medication, dressed in full camouflage and murdered his mother and father-in-law in front of his wife and daughter.  When he went to trial he was allowed to represent himself during both the guilt and penalty phases of the proceedings.  He dressed in a cowboy costume at court and attempted to subpoena John F. Kennedy, Jesus Christ and the Pope, among others.  During the trial he assumed the personality he called “Sarge” and narrated the events in the third person.
Ultimately, Panetti received a death sentence and although his many appeals focused on his mental illness, each was denied and he was scheduled for execution.  As the date neared, the issue of executing people with mental illness came to the forefront in Texas and around the country.  Many people came out against executing Panetti including former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, former Texas Gov. Mark White, conservative leaders, religious leaders, prominent lawyers, and over 94,000 people signed a change.org petition for clemency.
At this same time a nationwide poll conducted by the University of North Carolina found that Americans oppose the death penalty for persons with mental illness by a margin of 2 to 1.  This opposition was consistent across all political parties, all regions of the country, across both genders, and all income and education levels.
The court requires that an inmate have a rational understanding of why he is being executed. On the morning of Panetti’s scheduled execution date, the 5^th US Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay “in order to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter."  Panetti’s last competency exam was seven years ago.
This issue of whether states should be executing people with mental illness has grown as knowledge of these illnesses has increased throughout the years.  Some states including North Carolina and Kentucky have considered legislation to bar the execution of a defendant who "had a severe mental disorder or disability that significantly impaired his or her capacity to appreciate the nature, consequences, or wrongfulness of his or her conduct, exercise rational judgment in relation to conduct, or conform his or her conduct to the requirements of the law."  In addition, public outcry has grown as states have moved forward with executions of those who showed signs of and were diagnosed with severe mental illness.
The topic will become important in Colorado as we are bracing for a year-long very public and emotional trial that will look into competency, mental illness and the insanity defense.  Jurors will have to decide whether James Holmes, the Aurora theater shooter, was sane at the time of his crime and whether he qualifies for the death penalty.  Holmes’ mental health history will become a part of their decision and the question again will be, do we execute people with mental illness?

(This blog post was featured on HuffingtonPost.com December 4)

Following the non-indictment of NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for strangling Eric Garner to death with an illegal choke hold in Staten Island, it is clearer than ever that something is badly broken in our system of justice. Once again, a black man has been killed by a white police officer with impunity, and once again there is no accountability for excessive use of force by those who ought to be protecting our communities, not killing people in our communities.
This isn't just a problem in Ferguson, Missouri or Staten Island, New York. It is a problem across our nation, including here in Denver. Just yesterday, the top headline in the Denver Post featured excessive use of force by local law enforcement. Too often, police use excessive force in arrests, and inmates in jails are killed or badly injured by local deputies. Excessive force complaints have resulted in millions of dollars of judgments or settlements in Denver and surrounding communities, but law enforcement officers are almost never arrested or disciplined for their violent actions.
There are many fine officers who are careful and restrained in their use of force, but as long as the system protects those who cross the line, even in a case where the killing was filmed and the death was ruled by the coroner to be a homicide, public anger and distrust toward law enforcement will only grow. The primary justification given for shielding law enforcement from accountability for use of force is that their jobs are dangerous and they need to be given wide latitude in how to use force to protect themselves. However, a world in which communities hate and mistrust the police because they believe the police hate and mistrust them is surely a world that is more dangerous for law enforcement officers, not less.
There is enormous work to be done to address the problem of excessive use of force, including better screening and training of those entering law enforcement, better efforts to build good community relationships with law enforcement, deeper understanding of the role of conscious or unconscious racial bias in policing, better data on police stops, and proper use of police cameras. But as recent events illustrate, even these measures will not be enough unless there is personal accountability for those officers who disgrace an honorable profession by treating their badge and uniform as a license to maim or kill.
Click here to join the ACLU's call to the U.S. Justice Department to ban racial profiling by police and to require racial bias training against the use of force.

DENVER – Last night, the Denver City Council voted to authorize a $337,250 settlement to compensate three ACLU clients who were the victims of mistaken identity arrests by Denver law enforcement.  The City of Denver previously paid $232,000 in compensation to three additional people named in the same suit.  In each case, the ACLU argued that Denver police deliberately ignored facts that demonstrated that they were arresting or causing the arrest of the wrong person and that Denver Sheriff Department deputies refused to investigate obvious red flags and repeated complaints from plaintiffs and their family that they were locking up the wrong person.

Statement of ACLU of Colorado Legal Director Mark Silverstein

 “The ACLU of Colorado is encouraged that the Denver City Council has now authorized $337,250 to compensate three innocent victims of mistaken ID arrests carried out by Denver law enforcement.

“The mistaken ID arrests were a result of a widespread policy and practice of tolerating egregious mistakes, where a warrant for one person resulted in a different person being arrested.  In the course of discovery in this long-pending lawsuit, the ACLU of Colorado documented more than 500 occasions in a seven-year period in which persons were wrongly arrested and imprisoned in Denver’s jails.   Some persons spent weeks in jail wrongly imprisoned on warrants for others.  Some wound up pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit, in order to secure release for “time served.”

“Arrests carry serious consequences.  Beyond the time spent in jail away from work and family, people who are arrested can lose their jobs and be labeled as criminals in their community.  It’s critically important that when law enforcement chooses to arrest someone, they have firm practices and safeguards in place to ensure that they arrest the right person.

“Since the filing of this suit more than five years ago, the ACLU of Colorado has been working with the City of Denver to develop improved law enforcement policies that will reduce the frequency of mistaken ID arrests, and, when mistakes do happen, that will detect them promptly and remedy them quickly.”

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