Court Delays Execution of Mentally Ill Murderer

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday granted a stay of execution to a mentally ill killer who had been slated for execution later in the day.

The appellate court decided to send the case of Larry Robison back to a trial court in Fort Worth for the judge to consider Robison’s claim that his illness prevented him from understanding the death penalty and that therefore he could not be executed.

Robison, 42, was scheduled to have been put to death for murdering five people in Fort Worth in 1982. He sexually mutilated and decapitated his roommate, then went next door and murdered four more people, including an 11-year-old boy. Several years before the killings, he had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

Robison’s lawyers had argued that Robison could not be put to death under Texas law because he did not understand the significance of the death penalty. The court approved the indefinite stay of execution, 5 to 4.

Plans for the execution of a man judged to be mentally ill had drawn vigorous protests from opponents of the death penalty and advocates of increased spending on mental health services.

Pope John Paul II had asked Texas Gov. George W. Bush in a letter to commute Robison’s sentence to life in prison. “Killing people to show that killing is wrong is a striking contradiction, even more so when mental illness seems to be involved, as in this case,” the pope wrote.

The indefinite stay of execution saves Bush, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, from having to make a politically sensitive decision about Robison.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously rejected Robison’s appeal for clemency last week, but Bush still had to decide whether to grant a 30-day stay.

Bush, who portrays himself as a “compassionate conservative,” has commuted only one death sentence since taking office in 1995 and has never granted a 30-day reprieve.