The Death Row Prisoners Suffering From Severe Mental Illness

after the murders you said you were hearing voices yes I did when it got to the chapter that said if you're right I offend you they kicked him out of yourself he put out his eye in the cases of Gary Green and Andre Thomas they killed. their partners and children, then people see this and say, I mean, this was just jealousy, that's the easy answer. Our jails and prisons are the largest penal asylums we have in our country, especially on

death

row. Do you think he had a serious

mental

illness

? I think he was

mental

ly ill.

I don't think he had a serious mental

illness

. Why should people with serious mental illness not be eligible for the

death

penalty? They don't know what is happening to them. I think that made him schizophrenic as hell, but at the same time he murdered children. Mental illness does not excuse you from your actions. Has anyone ever explained to you what schizophrenia was, what bipolar disorder was, what psychosis was? No, we're in Livingston, Texas, heading to the state's death row to interview a man named Gary Green who has a long history of mental illness and is scheduled to be executed in 2 weeks.

Texas regularly executes these inmates, including people who have documented serious mental illnesses, so we head to death row, it's these two buildings. It is an incredibly safe environment here. I mean, you can see all the barbed wire. Here you can see the watchtowers. I asked if I could stand up just a few feet to my right on the grass and the media representative here said I could be. shot on sight how are you looking good yeah how are you um due to the circumstances I'm fine Gary Green stabbed his wife nearly two dozen times and drowned his stepdaughter Jasmine Montgomery on September 21, 2009 Gary brutally stabbed his wife Levita Armstead died and drowned his six-year-old daughter Jasmine.

He attempted to kill Lita's two young children, but they survived. I know you have a long history of mental illness. Mhm, what are your earliest memories of feeling symptoms of that? So early. In childhood, my biological father was very physically and verbally abusive to me, my mother, and on my mother's side, his family has a long history of mental illness, documented and undocumented, many of them have been in psychiatric hospitals, medicated, creation of madness and Mental illness combine with mine and are just a cocktail of chaos. Your brother said that you had an untreated mental illness since you were very little.

What were you experiencing? What was going on in your mind? uh bipolarism uh schizophrenia uh uh hallucinations Did anyone ever explain it to you? You know what schizophrenia was, what bipolar disorder was, what psychosis was. No, has anyone ever told you let's help you, let's solve this? No, growing up as a child in the 70s was taboo in a black community for your child. or people in his family had a mental illness. I had no outlet, no one to talk to because those kinds of things shouldn't be talked about, so it's always been an endless cycle, even to this day, people are afraid of being treated because stigma many times, I tried to address that kind of thing with my mother and she didn't want people to, quote, perceive her as having a child with special needs and that makes her a bad mother. no one does it all the time because it's a social thing when you and Lita got married, did you experience those serious symptoms of mental illness?

Yes, I was dealing with the trauma it was always there because I was never medicated, I was never put through any therapy. any type of treatment and she always told me all the time that I was bipolar and schizophrenic, she diagnosed me and she always made me angry because she used to tell her why you said things like that. That would tell you yes, but the whole time she didn't say it out of malice, she said it just out of concern and, from her own observation, she wanted to get your help just when Lita urged Gary to agree to go to a mental hospital. . hospital where doctors diagnosed him with Ma, major depressive disorder with psychotic features, prescribed him medications normally used to treat schizophrenia after 4 days.

Gary was able to leave voluntarily. I couldn't find out that we got divorced and I didn't know anything about it. Mar l 9 days you want a divorce I felt betrayed and then the boes told me hey man you could do that my plan was to kill us all take us all yeah so we can be in the ampal we all could have been a happy family later. the murders that you went to, uh, the police department, you turned yourself in, you met with the detective and the detective said that you were hearing voices when you committed those murders, yeah, I did all the things that are true, the things that I'm saying.

Not saying anything to justify my actions is like constantly reliving a bad movie that every time you get to the group and the parts and the bad thing is that it always pauses and then you press rewind and start the scene every frame again. and over and over again, then play with that part and go back and go and go and go and go and go and go, this is my whole life here, um, thank you so much, I'm very grateful, Gary, I appreciate it. to you and to me. I appreciate it, okay, have a good day, you too, okay, of the approximately 2,400 people on death row in the United States, at least 1,000 have mental illnesses, although experts say they are underreported.

Thank you, gentlemen, the case is presented, we will next hear arguments for and against. In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that insane quote cannot be legally enforced, so to argue their case, legal teams like Gary Greens often bring in experts to testify about mitigating evidence or information about the defendant's history that can mislead the defendant. jury of the most

severe

punishment. death in the Gary Green case his mental illness was presented to the court but he was not persuasive enough for jurors to spare his life they could not see past the brutality of his crime is this a scan that ever What you would use in your testimony, for example, is that you know it could be someone who suffers from a mental illness, and although scans do not diagnose mental illnesses, we do see common patterns in certain illnesses, so we can put the pieces together as if it were a puzzle.

The same types of symptoms in different settings on different tests and that helps us make our diagnosis. Dr. Shan Narker is a board-certified psychiatrist who has evaluated hundreds of death row inmates for serious mental illness, including Gary Green. I sat down with Gary Green and we talked. for an hour and he was articulate and told me his story and I think some people can look at that and say he doesn't seem sick, this is the nature of mental illness, no one has 100% bad days and no one has 100% good. We all have our ups and downs and this is an example of someone who can be articulate, intelligent and thoughtful and still have a significant mental illness because it's about knowing how the symptoms present themselves on that particular day at that time with the other factors and triggers together and that person can be very different What is schizo-effective disorder?

Well, schizophrenic disorder is actually a combination of two diagnoses: schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, so when someone has schizophrenia they have hallucinations, they suffer from delusions, their thoughts may be disorganized. and his behaviors can be disorganized and then if you add to that bipolar mood swings, when people can be high they can become depressed when you combine those two together, that's Gizo affective disorder and what did you learn from Gary? those type of symptoms or what he explained to you that helped you make that diagnosis, a lot of it was due to paranoia, he wasn't sure who to trust, he thought people were his children, they were turning against him, his family was being She turned on him, uh, and became convinced that this was really happening.

Of course, there are many people with actual schizophrenia who do not commit violent crimes. How do you explain that, from his expert point of view, it is something like a Perfect Storm? The way things happen, sometimes you're right, most people with mental illness don't commit crimes, but when you add illegal drugs, alcohol and stress, they take actions that they consider justified or in self-defense or they have no resort, but when they are not psychotic, they would never have done it. You know, in the case of Gary Green there is a lot of tragedy and a lot of deaths.

You know his victims, the steps he tried to kill and have traumatized what went wrong. I think you know it's an indictment of our Mental Health system of not being able to provide care to people who need it, so it becomes this cycle where violence continues to perpetuate itself. We're in Dallas, not far from where Gary Green killed Levita and Jasmine and one of the most difficult things about these cases is that the crimes are so horribly violent because not only did he kill those two family members, he tried to kill them. to his two stepchildren, hey, it's good to see you, one of them, JT accepted.

He talks to us and tells us how that experience has affected his life. I don't feel like he ever had the chance to be a kid. I feel like I've always been worried about Gary getting out or, you know, focused on how. My life would have been if my mom was here, my sister was here, what challenges have you had with mental health? Then I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. I've had four suicide attempts and when it comes to home, I can make it like two. sleepless days when you hear Gary and other people say that you know he had a serious mental illness, he was hearing voices, what goes through your mind.

I think a lot of people on the outside always try to tell you what's going on, and I think people try to make excuses for others too and one thing we need to realize is that mental illness does not excuse you from your actions like I have. a mental illness, but it's up to you to have the strength to get help or silence those voices. Have you ever seen any signs of psychosis or mental illness in Gary? I honestly don't think there's anything wrong with Gary. I think in a fit of rage he did something that you know he shouldn't have done.

I think he knew exactly what he wanted. he was doing, do you know your mom pressured him to get help before all this happened? I'm not sure, I mean what she said and I don't know if it's credible. Okay, but he said he didn't think he had anything. Something bad happened to him and your mom said you had to go get checked out, apparently they both went to this hospital and we got the medical records from there and they ended up diagnosing him and keeping him and then he was able to leave and it was shortly after. that everything that happened changes the way you feel a little bit, that's basically saying, hey, we know there's something wrong with you, but we're going to move on and let you do whatever you want and that, of course.

I would feel led to the death of my mother and sister. In the US today, one person in 20 must undergo treatment in a mental institution. In the 1950s, politicians enacted a deinstitutionalization movement that removed

severe

ly mentally ill people from hospitals and put them back into their communities. Electroshock therapy may be recommended for other disorders because lawmakers believed that psychiatric hospitals were inhumane facilities closed and Texas went from having 190 beds per 100,000 residents in 1955 to fewer than eight today. Incarceration rates for these people increased. We are talking about millions of people

suffering

from severe mental ESS once we could no longer admit them to hospitals or have beds for them, where are they going to go?

Our jails and prisons are the largest mental asylums we have in our country, esp. on death row needing help from his wheelchair heavily guarded and handcuffed Andre Thomas went from patient to prisoner this afternoon Andre Thomas is known as one of the most seriously mentally ill death row inmates in the United States Andre Thomas is on on death row for the 2004 murders of his ex-wife, his 4-year-old son, and his 13-month-old daughter, in the midst of a psychotic episode, Andre broke into his ex-wife Laura Boren's apartment early in the morning and Thomas believed Andre Jr. was the Antichrist in the 13-month-old boy, an evil spirit related to following God's orders, he said he cut out the children's hearts, believing it would kill her and her two children, according to court records. would free from demons.

He was sentenced to death in 2005. Bobby Peterson Kate was assigned. as a defense attorney behind the lead attorney right before his arraignment, he was reading the Bible, he was obsessed with it, and when he got to the chapter that said, if you're right, I offend the cast, that's what he did, literally, he told them. started he had one eye gouged out since the incident in 2004. Thomas gouged out both of his eyes by eating one of them and after that they determined he might not be competent so we sent him away so they sent him to the state hospital, they treated him with massive amounts. of drugs he made him competent and they brought him back for trial, so he wait a second, the state took him out of custody, put him in a detention centermental health, gave him drugs to make him competent to stand trial in a capital case, yes, and let me clarify. something there is a difference between competence to stand trial and sanity competence means that you are mentally well enough to help your lawyer with your defense you understand the charges against you you are able to speak communicate those types of things insanity is whether you knew or not that your actions at the time you committed them were right or wrong M, then they are two different standards, two different things, but if you don't understand why you are being executed or what execution is it?

In theory, you are constitutionally protected from the death penalty before murders. Andre knew something was wrong. He was admitted to a psychiatric hospital that requested an emergency detention order. He should have kept him there for 72 hours, instead he came out in less. More than a day, we basically wanted to convince a jury and make them see how sick he was, that was the goal so that they would understand that, for lack of a better term, a normal human being does not commit these types of atrocities, he does not start. his own eyes and then they don't sit there casually and just look at you and can't have a conversation why do you think the jury didn't believe he was not guilty by reason of insanity when talking to the jury?

They didn't care about mental illness, all they cared about was making sure that someone who had so brutally murdered three people would never walk in the sun again. All it took was looking at the video and photographs of the crime scene to make that determination and actually see. the victims, oh yeah, so the brutality of the crime overshadowed any of those mitigating factors like serious mental illness, absolutely, what was Andre doing during the trial? He loves sugar so we fed him Skittle and he ate Skittles all day the only time he showed anything. Excitement, any questions about what was going on was when the judge sentenced him to death and he didn't react to that.

I was standing next to him with my eyes open and he patted me on the shoulder telling me it would be okay. that everything was fine, I would be fine, so he wasn't even reacting, he didn't understand what was happening, he was reacting to my emotions, standing next to him, I had no idea that he had just been sentenced to death. None, I'm sorry, does you any good. It's emotional to remember that moment because having someone's life in your hands and failing is very difficult and that's what I experience with that apartment, that's where we lived.

Bri Hughes was Laura's boyfriend at the time of her death, they lived together here in this complex and shared a daughter, Leah, the 13-month-old girl murdered by Andre, do the memories of that day come back to you? Yes, yes, things that occur to me here are remembering all the teddy bears and stuffed animals there were. lying outside the apartment what Laura was like uh happy wonderful person to be with full of passion empathy a love your little Leah was only 13 months old what do you remember about her? she was daddy's girl and she never wanted him to put her down.

Little Andre too, her smile could light up the room. He loved him very much. Did you ever see violent tendencies or erratic behavior in Andre? I have never personally even heard him raise his voice. Did Laura ever mention to you that she was afraid of him or she was nervous? No, the night before the crime, Andre went to Laura and Brian's apartment for a few hours to visit his son. What did he look like that night? Some people might call him weird or unconventional or whatever, but he seemed worried. Can you give us? I, an example like um, he had something on his mind.

I realized that he wanted to get something off his chest but he didn't know how to do it. How has this affected your life since then? Bad, just sum it up in one word, word, bad. You have been able to find happiness, well, I laugh, I smile, I joke and happiness. I'll probably find happiness when I'm dead. Andre Thomas is 40 years old and has an execution date this year in the same Texas death chamber as Gary Green. From a medical perspective, is there really any difference between Gary Green and Andre Thomas? Not from a psychiatric point of view, not in terms of his mental illness, the diagnosis, the way he can affect someone, it may be different, but I think it's just a matter of degree, I mean. it just depends on the severity of the symptoms and when they struggle with a person and also people can be apparently psychotic, they can do things like what Mr.

Thomas did, that's really extreme, but you can also keep silent about it and not talk to people about it. it's because you're paranoid and that's why you keep those things to yourself don't tell people what you're experiencing do you think they should be judged differently by a jury or by those considering whether they should be eligible for a death sentence? I don't think so because I know how deeply it affects people and how it upsets their mind and that's important that the jury can be educated about those things because they have in mind what they believe is a serious mental illness and that can be very different from how is presented in the real world the main plot in the Gary Green case was the facts of the crime uh they were so heinous uh so much blood so much evil in the mind of the state and then just seeing that little girl floating in the bathtub I just think you can't get over that I sing America we are darker people they send us to eat in the kitchen when company comes but we laugh and we eat well and we get stronger tomorrow we will be at the table when company comes no one comes to eat us in the kitchen plus they will see how beautiful we are and we are ashamed to be Americans it has been 13 years since Gary Green was sentenced to death until today Kobe Warren one of his defense attorneys and Josh Healey, the prosecutor, still disagree on whether Gary's mental illness should have been considered when issuing the sentence.

What were the mitigating factors he focused on? I mean, there were some mental health issues. A tough education. Poverty is not a super stable home. I think he had a serious mental illness. I think he was mentally ill. I don't think he had a serious mental illness. Who did not spare his life? I think one of the hardest questions in this conversation is what that threshold is. It's not like Gary showed it. He came to court and said, by the way, I have a mental illness, family history, niso Carter, his brother testified that he remembers his brother acting very strange, hearing voices, hearing demons, and then you hear the doctors, psychiatrists, who say he has an actual schizophonic disorder. bipolar guy has hallucinations he hears voices telling him to do things why wasn't it enough for you because during cross-examination of his doctors and during cross-examination of his Witnesses we were able to show that he had some mental illness but it didn't reach the level that you are describing Gary Green versus Andre Thomas.

They had similar diagnoses. Do you have to gouge out your eyes to avoid being executed? Respond like this if you took both his diagnosis and his actions. I got 100 random people and said who is more mentally disordered, but it's subjective. I think that's what's interesting. All this is subjective. We're just hearing dramatic details about self-harm, what people are doing about erratic behavior, but nothing like that. It seems scientific to me. I would say that there absolutely has to be some kind of chemical imbalance to literally and physically remove your own eyeball and eat it. It is subjective, but it is more subjective for the jurors, as if they are the ones who have to make that determination as if they could give more credibility to what a particular expert says on the defense side or on the state's side, it depends. of them because, honestly, what Mercy is is if someone has enough grace and mercy in their heart to say yes, this is horrible, this is terrible, this person did these things, but do they need to die with the case by G Green?

Do you regret anything? The jury has extraordinary power when it comes to sentencing defendants to death and the jury is a reflection of the public. More than half the country still wants capital sentences to be carried out. 77% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats favor the death penalty and that is especially true in Texas, a state that has killed more than four times the number of people in the last 50 years, More than any other state, we are in Hunsville, Texas, at the Texas Prison Museum, to meet with former warden Jim Willet. He oversaw 89 executions here and I want to talk to him about how ingrained the death penalty is in the culture.

Those three guns. There they are not real, they are carved in wood and painted and they were made by inmates and they were going to use them to try to escape. I find it very interesting, so what is this we are seeing? This is a model. from Huntsville Prison The Walls Unit is the oldest prison in Texas, it housed its first inmate in 1849 and is where all the executions carried out by the state of Texas have been carried out, before that it depended on each county. and this is the Texas electric chair, old Sparky. It was first used in 1924 and was used until 1964 and 364 men died in that chair.

What role has the death penalty played in the state of Texas? Basically, it's the most severe form of punishment that's here. I think the people of Texas have had the attitude that there are certain crimes that if you commit them we're going to consider it the end of your life and I think that's also our character from the moment we that we become. one state, the vast majority of people in Texas are Christians and I think Christians support the death penalty. I believe in the death penalty and he killed three people. I believe in Texas law.

It's what Brian Hughes' daughter Britney was supposed to do. Being in the apartment the morning Andre Thomas killed his little sister but ended up staying with his mother Jennifer. Both still struggle with post-traumatic stress. Honestly, after that day, I don't remember much of anything because I was so traumatized or something. Everything at that point, especially most of my life after that, is a complete blur and I never understood how someone could go from being so cool and training every kid like they were basically theirs and just broke down one day, I mean, when you hear that he had a serious mental illness that he suffered from effective skito disorder I mean what's going on in your mind you want to know my personal opinion I think it's and I think it's a case of oh I can't have you no one will Can you give my opinion?

It is also my personal opinion. I also suffer from mental health. I think he had a lot of mental stuff going on and he didn't know how to handle it, so you think he has serious problems. mental illness Yes, do you think his mental illness should be a reason for him not to be executed? I'm confused about it. I think that man is schizophrenic as hell, but at the same time he murdered children and that's not right. I don't want hate or anything like that, but I'd rather him not be here anymore and Jennifer, when you see Andre's name in the paper to this day, uh, and everyone's debating what should happen to him if he execute.

No, I mean, what's your opinion? I don't think he was mentally ill at the time. When he came in, he kicked in the door of that apartment and killed those three people. He was not mentally ill. Then tell me how it is possible. I don't care, I'm not right in the head and maybe I haven't been since then, maybe that's when he started. I do not know if. I have a history of cutting and burning myself, so when I go to the mental hospital it's because my family wants me to do it other than that, I don't go she has, oh my God, Britney, I'm so sorry, she's a cutter, she's a burner, I has done for about 12 years, do you feel that all of these symptoms the serious mental illness that you have now do you think it's because of what Andre did?

Yeah, I was fine, I was fine, I was a great kid, I calmed down, I didn't really have any worries and then after this happened I was completely changed like I was stuck Vice President Rose moves the house 4075 without favoring his camera complete recommendation, pass your secretary in print, please call President Rooll Frank I Vice President Representative for Rose Tony Rose is sponsoring a bill that would allow criminal defense teams to introduce mitigating factors at the beginning of the judicial process rather than at the Rose's sentencing phase HB 727 awaiting applicability of the death penalty to a capital crime committed by the person with a serious mental illness the president recognizes Ms.

Rose explains the bill, thank you, Mr. President, I just want to tell you a little why I am so passionate about it. What is HB 727? House Bill 727 is a bill that exempts people with serious mental illness from the death penalty. It simply exempts them. It does not free them from their crime, it is a process that is done on a case by case basis and must be done in advance, which is different from when a person is sentenced to death, all the exams are done at the end. When I reached out to his Republican colleagues, none of them mentioned that they were pro-innocent lifers, but because many peoplehere you are not here to govern, they are not afraid to do so, they just do not support good policies because they want to make sure they make the right conservative marks on their scorecards why is this bill so important to you?

I spent most of my professional career in mental health corrections. I saw that the patients were individuals, they committed a crime and they were psychotic at the time and then once they are treated to see a totally different person, the person who should receive life without the possibility of parole instead of executing to a person because of a disease they were born with and when people say oh it's a slippery slope everyone claims they have a serious mental illness and this will only allow people to get out of control. What are you saying? I say they need to be educated about mental illness.

Are you familiar with the Gary Green case? I am familiar with his case. He was actually employed at the Dallas County Jail at the time he committed his crime. The young woman he murdered was my sorority sister knows someone who was a victim of one of these brutal crimes by someone who was severely mentally ill. I mean, is it hard to have that personal connection and still advocate for this bill? I don't see at all what the lack of access to mental health is like. The services have devastated my community. I feel like these people can be dangerous, but they are just people who need to be treated properly.

What do you think of a bill like HB 727? I don't think it's a bad idea, but I think. As far as the main stipulations about what they're doing to diagnose these people, people like Gary, I would need to see some type of testing. Do you know something that would allow me to know for sure that this person has a serious mental illness. affecting them and not only are they using, you know, this as a crutch. What's complicated is that a doctor diagnosed him with actual schizophrenia of the bipolar type, so I mean this law could have exempted him, how do you feel? about that it's really complicated, honestly, if I had exempted him, I probably would have, it probably would have been a lot worse.

I can't tell my mom how she reacted when you stabbed her. I can't know how my sister was. reacting to you holding his head underwater I just don't feel like that's fair in theory, you're open to this idea, but when you're the victim and you think about this person it's like it's harder, it's a harder question again, No. No matter how old we are, no matter what we are diagnosed with, I feel like we are all responsible for our actions and unless you have some kind of mental illness that gets to the point where you simply can't take care of yourself and yourself .

You are not competent enough to know how to do things yourself. I see no reason why you should be excused or for taking someone's life. It's been 19 years since Andre committed his crimes. Jennifer still thinks about the children who died and how her daughter could have done it. I have been one of them those poor p babies Lord you deserve that no one no one deserves that that is premeditated murder I don't care how you look at it it is premeditated murder you killed your strange wife your son your son what did you do with your wife and her 13 month old baby, He played God on March 27, 2004, he played God three times on March 7.

People from across the country gathered to protest and pray for Gary Green. If this execution takes place tonight we will be in Texas as 582. Hunsville Texas and Gary are scheduled to be executed in just a few hours as the crowd waited for news on Gary Green's execution. The news broke about Andre Thomas. Andre Thomas was just granted a stay of execution. Yes, in both the cases of Gary Green and Andre Thomas they have killed. their partners and children, then people see this and say, I mean, this was just jealousy, that's the easy answer, but my experience is that they are much more complicated than that, what may seem obvious on the outside may be far away. to be when you really dig deep. about how that person thought, you know how someone could think that someone who took out their eyeballs and ate one of them is mentally.

Saye, a district judge delayed Andre's execution, allowing his lawyers more time to defend his life, why people with serious mental problems? the disease is not eligible for the death penalty they don't know what is happening to them we are executing a body the mind is not there it appears the execution has occurred and Gary Green has been legally lynched by the state of Texas I pray someone will get that one out cross from the top of that building God Jesus Buddha who you pray to has nothing to do with killing our neighbors what was it like for you to be there witnessing Gary's execution?

I was there as a man. it's too good for you you know my mom couldn't go to sleep I just wish she had been more deserving of what she did do you think you would be sitting where you are today if you had gotten help as a child, well I know I wouldn't because that was the only time in my life that laid the foundation for everything to happen in my life, how are you?, how do you feel now?, well, a lot of mixed emotions because that's the question I ask myself every day and, uh, self-assessment 24 hours a day and uh, no one wants to get killed, no one, you know, you call it execution, but it's still murder and I have a problem with anyone who tries to harm him.

I don't, I've never been a type of person that doesn't justify anything I do or don't do and I had the opportunity to prepare myself on many levels, but at the end of the day I look at the big picture and the big picture, uh, it's just a life cycle.