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| Ariz. Mulls Treating To Execute |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 05/18/2001 |
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Arizona prison officials had a problem: They couldn't execute convicted killer Claude Maturana unless they first could treat his paranoid schizophrenia and restore his mental competence. So two years ago, they sent out letters to all 1,400 of Arizona's psychiatrists and advertised in a local newspaper for a doctor to treat Maturana. No one came forward. The ethical concerns over whether the state should treat someone in order to put him to death were too strong. Only months later, after the search had been expanded nationwide, did a doctor from Georgia agree to examine Maturana. The doctor's declaration that Maturana was competent - defined by state law as having an awareness of his death sentence and why it was imposed - gave Arizona the opening it needed to maintain his status on death row. On May 23, Maturana's case will move forward when his attorney plans to argue before the state Supreme Court that the more rigorous standards for mental competency during a trial should apply to her client. Those standards require that the defendant be able to assist in his own defense. The case has stirred a debate over the legal and ethical propriety of treating an inmate in order to make him suitable for execution. Since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976, no death row inmate in the United States has been found incompetent and then treated by government doctors in an attempt to restore his competency and allow his execution, said Kent Cattani, who oversees death penalty appeals for the Arizona Attorney General's office. Cattani argues that somebody who can be competent with more medication should not be spared: Maturana, a 44-year-old French citizen, is years away from execution because his appeals have not run their course. His lawyer said Maturana spends his days talking about visits from his mother, who died 30 years ago, and has hallucinations that he is already dead. Maturana was sentenced to death in 1992 for the murder of 16-year-old Glen Estes near Tucson. In January 1999, Maturana was declared incompetent by two doctors after Ryan requested a psychiatric evaluation. He was sent to a prison unit on the grounds of the Arizona State Hospital in Phoenix. Doctors there kept him on the same drug he has been on for years to control his condition but refused to try to restore his competence with more aggressive medication because it conflicted with the American Medical Association code of ethics. The organization deems it unethical to treat someone to restore competence in such a case because it is the equivalent of participating in an execution. Bennett's diagnosis that Maturana was competent - therefore not needing more aggressive treatment - shocked Dr. Jerry Dennis, who had been medicating him. Bennett did not return several calls for comment. 'A person who says he's dead already, how can he have an adequate understanding of being killed?'' Dennis said. Gov. Jane Hull signed a bill last month that bans the execution of mentally retarded criminals, and the U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to debate the same issue in a push death penalty foes hope will eventually spare the mentally impaired from capital punishment. |
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He has blue eyes. Cold like steel. His legs are wide. Like tree trunks. And he has a shock of red hair, red, like the fires of hell. Hamilton Lindley His antics were known from town to town as he was a droll card and often known as a droll farceur. with his madcap pantaloon is a zany adventurer and a cavorter with a motley troupe of buffoons.