San Antonio Express-News

By Lisa Sandberg and Peggy Fikac
San Antonio Express-News

Web Posted : 02/04/2004 12:00 AM

FREDERICKSBURG ˜ Watching Scott Panetti defend himself at his capital murder trial was like watching a man slowly kill himself. Standing before jurors, the tall, broad-shouldered Navy veteran was boisterous, showy and imposing. He dressed in garish cowboy outfits. He argued with witnesses, including his ex-wife, whose parents he was accused of killing. He lashed out at his dead father-in-law. He stared hard at jurors and spoke out of turn. He blamed the killings on an alter ego named Sarge. He mumbled and acted crazy. In fact, Scott Panetti is a schizophrenic. His execution, scheduled for Thursday in Huntsville, has reopened wounds in a town where the sound of gunfire usually is heard only during deer season. It also has stirred arguments from critics who believe the death penalty shouldn't be inflicted on the mentally ill. The former ranch hand had a long history of mental illness when a Kerrville jury sentenced him to death for gunning down Joe and Amanda Alvarado in a 1992 double homicide that jolted the close-knit tourist town of Fredericksburg. On the one hand are folks such as Gillespie County Sheriff Milton Jung, who knew Panetti as a town menace and insisted he was faking a decade of revolving-door psychiatric hospitalizations. "Scott could put on a two-personality show," the sheriff said. "He's an actor." On the other are opponents who believe mental illnesses such as Panetti's schizophrenia and psychotic episodes should join mental retardation and insanity as categories that exempt convicts from the death penalty. "People who have mental illness have to be measured differently," said Scott Monroe, an attorney in Kerrville who was appointed stand-by counsel in Panetti's 1995 capital murder trial. He said he helplessly watched Panetti "slowly commit suicide. ... Scott was put into a set of parameters for normal people, and he wasn't normal." Critics question why a man diagnosed as schizophrenic by at least six doctors not only was charged with capital murder but was allowed to represent himself over the objections of both his initial defense lawyers and prosecutors. "A judge in Texas has the authority to deny a severely mentally ill man who is schizophrenic the right to represent himself, and he'd have no fear of being reversed on that basis," said Keith Hampton of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, referring to District Judge Steven Ables, who oversaw the case and refused to comment. "A system that lets a schizophrenic man represent himself when he's on trial for his life has a kangaroo ... court," Hampton added. The Supreme Court barred the insane from being executed in a 1986 decision and in 2002 barred killing defendants with mental retardation. The justices made no such ruling about the mentally ill. A person can be mentally ill but still be able to distinguish between right and wrong, which precludes insanity as a defense. And that was Panetti's problem. "He wasn't someone who sat around and drooled and noticed aliens on the wall and talked to lamps," Monroe said. In other words, he's not insane. He is mentally ill. Hopes for a last-minute reprieve aren't great ˜ just last week, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 15-1 against a reprieve ˜ but Michael Gross, his appeals lawyer, remains optimistic. Gross is taking the case to Gov. Rick Perry's office, hoping for a 30-day delay, and to the federal courts, starting with the Western District of Texas. "There's been no change in Scott at all," Gross said Tuesday following an hourlong interview with Panetti on death row. "He doesn't realize why he's being executed. ... He just talks non-stop and jumps from subject to subject. There's no laughing, no crying, no pregnant pauses." From his victims, there's no sympathy for Panetti, 45. Sonja Alvarado has no qualms about her ex-husband being executed. She watched him kill her parents. She witnessed Panetti first shoot her father, then her mother in the chest with a deer rifle in the early morning hours of Sept. 8, 1992. "Blood just spattered all over me (and my daughter)," the unemployed former waitress recalled last week from her Fredericksburg home. The blood was hot and she remembers slipping on it as Panetti led her and their daughter, then 3 years old, out of her parent's house. Alvarado had fled there after she walked out on Panetti a few weeks earlier. Panetti eventually spared the lives of his family and surrendered to authorities later that day, after changing out of a camouflaged military outfit and into a black jacket and tie. Alvarado rarely ponders her abusive ex-husband's mental illness. She initially signed an affidavit saying she didn't want Panetti executed because her daughter wanted closer ties to her father. However, Alvarado changed her mind after her daughter decided she wanted no contact with him. "We won't feel safe until he's dead," said Alvarado, also 45. Lt. Bob Bertelson of the Fredericksburg Police Department has no misgivings about Panetti's death sentence, either. Bertleson recalled removing flesh off the blinds of the Alvarado's tidy wood-framed Austin Street home the day of the murders. "See the carnage, your view will change," he said to anyone who might suggest that Panetti be spared." Panetti was a teenager when his parents moved the family from Wisconsin to Fredericksburg in the 1970s. He became a ranch hand like his father, and fell in love with all things Texas, those who knew him recalled. He had an explosive temper and often was in trouble. He'd drink while driving, harass his wife or threaten police called to a scene. The Sheriff's Office has a record of four arrests in the 1980s. Repeatedly hospitalized during the same period, beginning in 1981, his medical records are inches thick. "Psychotic, delusional and actively hallucinating," read one entry from the Hill Country-based Starlite Hospital in April 1986, when he was diagnosed with chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia. "Grandiose and speaking incoherently," read another entry from Kerrville State Hospital, where he was transferred that same year. He told doctors in Wisconsin, where he was later hospitalized, that federal agents where "watching him." He nailed his curtains shut so neighbors wouldn't film him and buried his furniture so the devil couldn't hide in it. The last hospital stay ˜ one of 14 over 11 years ˜ ended two months before the murders. Once charged with capital murder in the Alvarados' slaying, it didn't take Panetti long to fire his attorneys. He seemed to relish the idea of mounting his own defense, Monroe recalled. He ordered Monroe, his appointed stand-by counsel, to sit in the back of the courtroom. "Wild horses with chains couldn't keep Scott off the witness stand," Monroe said. "It was a circus act and Scott was the ringmaster." In court, Panetti interrogated his wife about their failing marriage. He talked about Elvis Presley's drug problem, his conversion to Catholicism and his alter ego named Sarge. "Each minute seemed to last an hour," Monroe said. The jury appeared terrified. "We knew where this was going," Monroe said. Sheriff Jung agreed. "He didn't do himself any favors," he said. Deliberations lasted just four hours that September day in 1995. Since then, Panetti's had numerous appeals, all have failed. Should the latest be unsuccessful he will be executed Thursday.


				*SAVE SCOTT PANETTI* *San Antonio Express-News*



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		Mentally Ill Killer Handed a Stay By Lisa Sandberg San Antonio Express-News Web Posted : 02/05/2004 12:00 AM Advocates for the mentally ill hailed a federal judge's 11th-hour order Wednesday postponing the execution of a convicted killer diagnosed with schizophrenia so the trial jurist could re-examine the inmate's competency. "This is a significant victory," said Steve Hall, director of the StandDownTexas Project, an organization advocating an end to the death penalty. Federal District Judge Sam Sparks granted Scott Panetti a 60-day stay after his San Antonio pro-bono appeal lawyer, Michael Gross, filed papers insisting the 45-year-old inmate was incompetent because he didn't understand the reason for his execution. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled executions can be carried out only on those who understand why they are being put to death. Panetti's supporters greeted Wednesday's ruling with some caution. That's because the case now goes before state District Judge Steven Ables, who presided over Panetti's 1995 death penalty trial and has ruled against the former Fredericksburg resident on the four appeals that have landed on his desk. Ables now must decide whether to grant a hearing to re-examine Panetti's competency, a petition the judge denied just last week. If Ables OKs the hearing and declares Panetti too ill to be executed now, he still would face lethal injection later if his mental condition improves. "It's all in his court right now, both literally and figuratively," Gross said Wednesday of Ables. Numerous appeals to have Panetti's death sentence commuted to life have failed, Gross said. The only issue on the table now is whether Panetti is too sick to be executed, Gross said. Panetti, a longtime schizophrenic who represented himself at his trial dressed in a Tom Mix-style cowboy outfit, was scheduled to be executed today in Huntsville. A Kerrville jury took four hours to sentence him to death for gunning down his in-laws, Joe and Amanda Alvarado, in September 1992 as his estranged wife and 3-year-old daughter watched. Sparks' order generated just as much emotion among those unsympathetic to Panetti's claims. "He's the best actor they've got on death row right now," said Gillespie County Sheriff Milton Jung, who helped arrest Panetti. "Right now everyone's feeling sorry for him. People don't know half the story. I think the bigger part of this community was ready to put this behind them." In the latest appeal, Gross presented Sparks with the conclusions of two pro-bono defense experts who spent more than an hour with Panetti on death row Tuesday. Forensic psychologist Mark D. Cunningham diagnosed Panetti as "actively psychotic" and suffering from schizophrenia. He said Panetti suffered from delusions and paranoia and jumped from topic to topic. University of Texas at Austin law Professor David R. Dow said: "In 15 years of representing death row inmates, I do not believe I have met anyone who is as obviously and as deeply mentally disturbed as Mr. Panetti clearly is." The case has garnered international attention and has become a rallying cry for those who believe that mentally ill criminals should be spared the death penalty, just as the U.S. Supreme Court has spared the mentally retarded and the insane. A person can be mentally ill but still understand the nature of his or her actions or be able to distinguish between right and wrong, which precludes insanity as a defense. Panetti had been institutionalized at least 14 times in the decade before the murders. Death penalty opponents believe he is the only Texas death row inmate allowed to represent himself. "This is the kind of case that cries out for mercy and leniency," Gross said.						Fredericksburg split over execution By Lisa Sandberg and Peggy Fikac San Antonio Express-News Web Posted : 02/04/2004 12:00 AM FREDERICKSBURG ˜ Watching Scott Panetti defend himself at his capital murder trial was like watching a man slowly kill himself. Standing before jurors, the tall, broad-shouldered Navy veteran was boisterous, showy and imposing. He dressed in garish cowboy outfits. He argued with witnesses, including his ex-wife, whose parents he was accused of killing. He lashed out at his dead father-in-law. He stared hard at jurors and spoke out of turn. He blamed the killings on an alter ego named Sarge. He mumbled and acted crazy. In fact, Scott Panetti is a schizophrenic. His execution, scheduled for Thursday in Huntsville, has reopened wounds in a town where the sound of gunfire usually is heard only during deer season. It also has stirred arguments from critics who believe the death penalty shouldn't be inflicted on the mentally ill. The former ranch hand had a long history of mental illness when a Kerrville jury sentenced him to death for gunning down Joe and Amanda Alvarado in a 1992 double homicide that jolted the close-knit tourist town of Fredericksburg. On the one hand are folks such as Gillespie County Sheriff Milton Jung, who knew Panetti as a town menace and insisted he was faking a decade of revolving-door psychiatric hospitalizations. "Scott could put on a two-personality show," the sheriff said. "He's an actor." On the other are opponents who believe mental illnesses such as Panetti's schizophrenia and psychotic episodes should join mental retardation and insanity as categories that exempt convicts from the death penalty. "People who have mental illness have to be measured differently," said Scott Monroe, an attorney in Kerrville who was appointed stand-by counsel in Panetti's 1995 capital murder trial. He said he helplessly watched Panetti "slowly commit suicide. ... Scott was put into a set of parameters for normal people, and he wasn't normal." Critics question why a man diagnosed as schizophrenic by at least six doctors not only was charged with capital murder but was allowed to represent himself over the objections of both his initial defense lawyers and prosecutors. "A judge in Texas has the authority to deny a severely mentally ill man who is schizophrenic the right to represent himself, and he'd have no fear of being reversed on that basis," said Keith Hampton of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, referring to District Judge Steven Ables, who oversaw the case and refused to comment. "A system that lets a schizophrenic man represent himself when he's on trial for his life has a kangaroo ... court," Hampton added. The Supreme Court barred the insane from being executed in a 1986 decision and in 2002 barred killing defendants with mental retardation. The justices made no such ruling about the mentally ill. A person can be mentally ill but still be able to distinguish between right and wrong, which precludes insanity as a defense. And that was Panetti's problem. "He wasn't someone who sat around and drooled and noticed aliens on the wall and talked to lamps," Monroe said. In other words, he's not insane. He is mentally ill. Hopes for a last-minute reprieve aren't great ˜ just last week, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 15-1 against a reprieve ˜ but Michael Gross, his appeals lawyer, remains optimistic. Gross is taking the case to Gov. Rick Perry's office, hoping for a 30-day delay, and to the federal courts, starting with the Western District of Texas. "There's been no change in Scott at all," Gross said Tuesday following an hourlong interview with Panetti on death row. "He doesn't realize why he's being executed. ... He just talks non-stop and jumps from subject to subject. There's no laughing, no crying, no pregnant pauses." From his victims, there's no sympathy for Panetti, 45. Sonja Alvarado has no qualms about her ex-husband being executed. She watched him kill her parents. She witnessed Panetti first shoot her father, then her mother in the chest with a deer rifle in the early morning hours of Sept. 8, 1992. "Blood just spattered all over me (and my daughter)," the unemployed former waitress recalled last week from her Fredericksburg home. The blood was hot and she remembers slipping on it as Panetti led her and their daughter, then 3 years old, out of her parent's house. Alvarado had fled there after she walked out on Panetti a few weeks earlier. Panetti eventually spared the lives of his family and surrendered to authorities later that day, after changing out of a camouflaged military outfit and into a black jacket and tie. Alvarado rarely ponders her abusive ex-husband's mental illness. She initially signed an affidavit saying she didn't want Panetti executed because her daughter wanted closer ties to her father. However, Alvarado changed her mind after her daughter decided she wanted no contact with him. "We won't feel safe until he's dead," said Alvarado, also 45. Lt. Bob Bertelson of the Fredericksburg Police Department has no misgivings about Panetti's death sentence, either. Bertleson recalled removing flesh off the blinds of the Alvarado's tidy wood-framed Austin Street home the day of the murders. "See the carnage, your view will change," he said to anyone who might suggest that Panetti be spared." Panetti was a teenager when his parents moved the family from Wisconsin to Fredericksburg in the 1970s. He became a ranch hand like his father, and fell in love with all things Texas, those who knew him recalled. He had an explosive temper and often was in trouble. He'd drink while driving, harass his wife or threaten police called to a scene. The Sheriff's Office has a record of four arrests in the 1980s. Repeatedly hospitalized during the same period, beginning in 1981, his medical records are inches thick. "Psychotic, delusional and actively hallucinating," read one entry from the Hill Country-based Starlite Hospital in April 1986, when he was diagnosed with chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia. "Grandiose and speaking incoherently," read another entry from Kerrville State Hospital, where he was transferred that same year. He told doctors in Wisconsin, where he was later hospitalized, that federal agents where "watching him." He nailed his curtains shut so neighbors wouldn't film him and buried his furniture so the devil couldn't hide in it. The last hospital stay ˜ one of 14 over 11 years ˜ ended two months before the murders. Once charged with capital murder in the Alvarados' slaying, it didn't take Panetti long to fire his attorneys. He seemed to relish the idea of mounting his own defense, Monroe recalled. He ordered Monroe, his appointed stand-by counsel, to sit in the back of the courtroom. "Wild horses with chains couldn't keep Scott off the witness stand," Monroe said. "It was a circus act and Scott was the ringmaster." In court, Panetti interrogated his wife about their failing marriage. He talked about Elvis Presley's drug problem, his conversion to Catholicism and his alter ego named Sarge. "Each minute seemed to last an hour," Monroe said. The jury appeared terrified. "We knew where this was going," Monroe said. Sheriff Jung agreed. "He didn't do himself any favors," he said. Deliberations lasted just four hours that September day in 1995. Since then, Panetti's had numerous appeals, all have failed. Should the latest be unsuccessful he will be executed Thursday.



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