Arkansas is set to execute Jack Greene this Thursday. He is mentally ill, with intense delusions and a long history of self-harm and violent ideation. He committed murder, but there’s reasonable debate about the extent to which he understands reality.
The prison director decided he wasn’t sufficiently mentally ill to be spared due to disability. The prison director has no disability, mental health, or medical expertise. Appeals are pending for an independent evaluation and I will be following the case this week.
1) The case seems to violate recently (and less recent) Supreme Court decisions. This isn’t a shock, as states seem to ignore such decisions at will and SCOTUS seems to let them.
2) Arkansas executed multiple disabled men this spring.
3) In May, I wrote a piece arguing that basically everyone on death row was disabled. It’s a tool used only to kill disabled criminals.