Title: Does the U.S. Execute People with Mental Illness? It's Complicated - The New York Times
Headings: Does the U.S. Execute People with Mental Illness? It's Complicated
U.S.
Does the U.S. Execute People with Mental Illness? It's Complicated

Content: For example, Andrea Yates was deeply psychotic when she drowned her five children in 2001, believing she was saving them from damnation. But that did not mean she did not understand the consequences of her actions or know they were wrong. At her first trial, the jury rejected her insanity defense. And when it comes to execution, it is the person’s mental state at the time of punishment that matters. No one argued that Alvin Bernard Ford was insane when he killed a police officer in 1974. But he later became obsessed with the Ku Klux Klan and came to believe that family members and prominent politicians were the victims of a prolonged hostage crisis. His case, Ford v. Wainwright, reached the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1986 that an insane person could not be executed. Three years later, though, a federal judge ruled that Mr. Ford was not insane. He died on death row, of natural causes, in 1991. Sanity can fluctuate.