Texas Death Penalty Debate: Andre Thomas Is ‘Clearly Crazy’

By Alicia Sparks

Mike Farrell. Phil Donahue. Elvis Costello. Arlo Guthrie. Danny Glover. Ani DiFranco. Martin Sheen. These are just a few of the celebrities who openly oppose the death penalty.

Even my own personal hero, Dave Matthews, has spoken out on the issue.

Me? Well, I’m not here to discuss my views on the death penalty. I’m not even up to speed on the death penalty laws throughout America. Actually, before I Googled the information, I was only a hundred percent sure about two things regarding death penalty laws: My own state doesn’t have the death penalty, and Texas does.

What I am here to discuss is an ongoing death penalty debate in Texas right now involving a man named Andre Thomas who murdered his wife and her two children in 2004. You’d think, with all the news stories surrounding the death penalty (some involving Texas, and some not), the story wouldn’t have stuck out too much for me. Yet, when I read about how Thomas plucked each of his eyes from its socket (one at his trial, and one later on while he sat on death row), actually ate one of them, and is still being considered “sane,” I had to raise an eyebrow.

Thomas is “clearly ‘crazy,’ ” a judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals wrote in a concurring denial of his appeal last month, “but he is also ’sane’ under Texas law.”

(”Clearly crazy”? Really? That’s the kind of stuff judges include in appeal denials? And here I thought there was some kind of official standard or something.)

It’s the “under Texas law” part that has mental health advocates, lawyers, and university professors really bent out of shape right now.

“We need to change the law,” said Brian Shannon, a Texas Tech law professor, because a mentally ill person may know their conduct is wrong but be unable to fully comprehend the situation because the illness affects his “emotional state and thinking and reasoning ability.”

Whether or not the state’s death penalty law needs some tweaking, some folks claim Andre’s mental health was worsened by drinking and drug use and “[u]nder Texas law if the illness is caused or worsened by ‘voluntary intoxication’ such as drug or alcohol abuse, ‘you don’t get to claim insanity.’”

I wonder how self medication and dual diagnosis falls into this, if at all?

Anyway, there doesn’t seem to be too much coverage of this issue, which is also kind of surprising. A man who cuts out the hearts of his family, turns himself in to the police and claims God told him to commit the murders, and then plucks out his eyes and eats one of them is deemed mentally fit? And not many people - if any - outside of Texas are talking about it?

My reason for finding out about celebrities who oppose the death penalty was pure curiosity. I’m not defending Andre Thomas - I’m not stating he is or isn’t sane, or that he should or shouldn’t be given the death penalty - but I am wondering how much coverage this situation might get if one of these celebrities who oppose the death penalty picked up on it.

Would that bring enough attention to prompt lawmakers to rewrite the state’s death penalty law? On that note, should the state’s death penalty law be rewritten? What do you think?


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