USA - Scott Panetti (TX)

USA - Texas. Scott Panetti Dies on Death Row of Natural Causes on May 26

June 3, 2025:

June 3, 2025 - Texas. Scott Panetti Dies on Death Row of Natural Causes on May 26

Prisoner in Landmark Competency Case

Scott Panetti died on Texas’ death row at the end of May 2025 after 30 years in prison. He became well-known for the role his case played in clarifying the legal standard for determining when defendants are competent to face execution — precedent that continues to shape court decisions nationwide.

Mr. Panetti’s severe mental illness manifested in his late teens, leading to more than a dozen psychiatric hospitalizations through the 1980s and early 1990s. His documented conditions included schizophrenia, paranoid delusions, and auditory hallucinations. Medical records from multiple facilities, including Kerrville State Hospital, detailed his elaborate delusional beliefs, including conspiracy theories and the development of multiple personalities.

In September 1992, a month after outpatient treatment revealed his worsening mental state, Mr. Panetti shaved his head, donned military fatigues, and drove to the home of his estranged in-laws, Joe and Amanda Alvarado. Breaking into their home, he shot both of them and took his estranged wife and young daughter to a bunkhouse where he had been living, though he eventually let them go unharmed. He surrendered to the police later the same day. Mr. Panetti’s statements to the police revealed the depth of his delusions: he claimed that “Sarge,” an auditory hallucination, had controlled his actions during the murders. According to Mr. Panetti, divine intervention prevented either of the victims from suffering, and demons mocked him while fleeing the crime scene.

Despite significant concerns about his mental state, including conflicting expert opinions, a jury ultimately found him competent to stand trial. At his 1995 trial, Mr. Panetti, who had stopped taking his medication, waived his right to counsel and insisted on representing himself, despite his well-documented psychiatric history and over the objections of his family and defense counsel. Dressed as a TV-Western cowboy, Mr. Panetti conducted his own defense and attempted to subpoena figures including Jesus Christ and President John F. Kennedy, among hundreds of others. The trial was described as a “circus” and “a farce” by legal observers. The jury convicted him of capital murder and sentenced him to death.

In 2004, Texas issued a death warrant seeking to execute Mr. Panetti. His counsel moved to halt his execution because he was incompetent and the Constitution “forbade the execution upon the insane.” After failing to transcribe court proceedings and denying Mr. Panetti’s counsel the assistance of a mental health expert, the trial court appointed its own experts to evaluate Mr. Panetti and denied his incompetency claim without a hearing. On appeal, Texas federal courts stayed Mr. Panetti’s execution, granted funding for defense mental health experts, and conducted an evidentiary hearing at which he was again found competent. The court applied the legal standard that had been set by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that “require[d] the petitioner know no more than the fact of his impending execution and the factual predicate for execution.” The Fifth Circuit affirmed.

In its landmark ruling in Panetti v. Quarterman in 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that the state court competency proceedings had violated Mr. Panetti’s right to due process and that the federal court had applied the wrong test for determining competency. “A prisoner’s awareness of the State’s rationale for an execution is not the same as a rational understanding of it,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the 5 – 4 majority. The Court returned the case to the lower federal courts to determine whether the delusions from Mr. Panetti’s psychotic disorder “so impair [ed his] concept of reality that he cannot reach a rational understanding of the reason for the execution.”

On remand, the Texas district court again denied Mr. Panetti’s incompetency claim, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review that ruling. In 2014, Texas scheduled a new execution date, but the Fifth Circuit issued a stay and ordered a full hearing on Mr. Panetti’s competency. In his opening statement to the district court during this October 2022 proceeding, Gregory Wiercoch, Mr. Panetti’s attorney, noted, “It is unprecedented to be litigating on an execution competency claim for 20 years[.]”

In September 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled that Mr. Panetti was not competent to be executed, finding that his severe mental illness rendered him unable to meet the “rational understanding” standard his case had established. The ruling was the culmination of decades of litigation by legal advocates and supporters to prevent Mr. Panetti’s execution. “There are several reasons for prohibiting the execution of the insane, including the questionable retributive value of executing an individual so wracked by mental illness that he cannot comprehend the ‘meaning and purpose of the punishment,’ as well as society’s intuition that such an execution ‘simply offends humanity.’ Scott Panetti is one of these individuals,” wrote Judge Robert Pitman.

Mr. Panetti remained on death row until his death on May 26, 2025.

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/scott-panetti-prisoner-in-landmark-competency-case-dies-on-texas-death-row-of-natural-causes