Florida inmate found fit to be executed despite history of mental illness
Source: Guardian
Florida inmate found fit to be executed despite history of mental illness
Florida judge rules John Ferguson can be put to death despite US supreme court ruling barring execution of the mentally ill
Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 October 2012 14.43 EDT
A Florida judge has ruled that a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who believes he is the "Prince of God" and is convinced that he will be resurrected to sit for eternity at God's right hand is sane and can put to death next week.
David Glant, a judge with Florida's eighth circuit, has found that John Ferguson, 64, can be given lethal injections next Thursday despite a US supreme court injunction that prohibits executions of the insane. In his concluding remarks, the judge agrees with the prisoner's defence lawyers that Ferguson is a paranoid schizophrenic who genuinely believes he is "Prince of God".
The judge accepts that the prisoner has a "long history of mental illness" and finds there is no evidence to support the prosecution contention, made over several years, that Ferguson was pretending to be mentally ill in order to avoid execution. Yet he goes on to conclude that "there is no evidence that his mental illness interferes, in any way, with his 'rational understanding' of the fact of his pending execution and the reason for it".
Astoundingly, the judge goes on to say that the prisoner's "grandiose delusion" of himself as being akin to Jesus at the point of his resurrection is in fact "relatively normal Christian belief". He writes: "There is no evidence that Ferguson's belief as to his role in the world and what may happen to him in the afterlife is so significantly different from beliefs other Christians may hold so as to consider it a sign of insanity."
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/14/florida-inmate-executed-mental-illness
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