Holton Receives Stay of Execution

Fortunately, a federal court isn't sure whether the state of Tennessee should kill a severely mentally ill individual. From A-Wheezy at TCASK:

Daryl Holton has received a stay of execution from the Sixth Circuit Court. The panel agreed that a reasonable showing of Holton's mental incompetence had been made and therefore called for a full hearing to determine Holton's mental competency!

For today, all the Nashville vigil and protest plans are therefore called off. However, the fact that a man with such clear mental illness came within twelve hours of execution is a clear indictment of our capital punishment system. As a state, we should be offering treatment to people with mental illness, not executing them. Cases like this explain why the American Psychological Association, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the National Association of Social Workers, have called for a moratorium on executions. Our system is simply incapable of properly understanding or dealing with defendants with serious mental illnesses.