St. Louis
The state of Arkansas can force a death-row inmate to take antipsychotic medicine so he will be sane enough to execute, a federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled this week. The court’s 6-5 majority said that that option was more humane than letting the prisoner, Charles Laverne Singleton, rot in his cell, sick and untreated. Singleton was sentenced to death in 1979 for killing a grocery-store clerk. He came to believe his cell was possessed by demons. In 2001, he wrote to the appeals court, claiming that his victim was alive “somewhere on earth waiting for me—her groom.” The Supreme Court has barred executing the insane since 1986, although it is legal to forcibly medicate inmates for their own good. Singleton’s lawyer said that once his client’s execution date is set, taking the medicine “no longer is in his medical best interests.”
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