"A Meaningless Ritual": How the Lack of a Postconviction Competency Standard Deprives the Mentally Ill of Effective Habeas Review in Texas*

Miller, Hannah Robertson, Texas Law Review

"It is deplorable and outrageous that . . . prisons appear to have become a repository for a great number of . . . mentally ill citizens. Persons who, with psychiatric care, could fit well into society, are instead locked away, to become wards of the state's penal system. Then, in a tragically ironic twist, they may be confined in conditions that nurture, rather than abate, their psychoses."

- Judge William Wayne Justice1

Kelsey Patterson was sentenced to death by the State of Texas in 1993 for the murders of Louis Oates, a sixty-three-year-old owner of an oil company in Palestine, Texas, and Oates's business secretary, Dorothy Harris.2 After the murders, he was found …

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: "A Meaningless Ritual": How the Lack of a Postconviction Competency Standard Deprives the Mentally Ill of Effective Habeas Review in Texas*. Contributors: Miller, Hannah Robertson - Author. Journal title: Texas Law Review. Volume: 87. Issue: 1 Publication date: November 2008. Page number: 267+. © University of Texas, Austin, School of Law Publications, Inc. Dec 2008. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.