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Typical leftist nonsense! Always finding excuses for criminals instead of holding them accountable. Our justice system gets bogged down with political correctness instead of delivering real justice. These bleeding-heart liberals forget about the victims and how it's their lives that'll never be the same! It's ridiculous!
That's some liberal nonsense! We should be tough on crime, not coddle criminals with mental excuses. David Lee Roberts made his choice; he knew what he was doing. It's sickening to hide behind the Constitution while ignoring justice for the victims. MAGA justice means being strong, not soft!
If a person can commit a crime and not be prosecuted in the name of being insane, then he will do it again and again so why would the law forbid him from being executed??? That in itself is insane!!!
Hanging isn't cruel and unusual punishment. That's why is been used so often.
I think there should be a serious conversation about what constitutes cruel and unusual. Most forms of execution are neither cruel or unusual. I feel the death penalty is not carried out near enough in this country. Putting someone to death to us not punishment, it is a protection for society that they will never harm anyone again.
The emphasis should be on his doing the crime and subsequently his appropriate punishment. If he did the crime and is found guilty then the appropriate penalty should follow. If he murders then the state should end his life. Keep it simple.
The beginning of our great Nation, that’s not a question that was asked!
Please clarify your position.
I can understand why a person on death row could become mentally unbalanced after a time, but the problem is how long these people spend there. This man has been there for 30 years. Any appeals should have been done within a much shorter time, say 10 years. If that had happened, he may not have become mentally unstable.
He was insane to have committed a murder; yet he still did it
I really do not care of he is sane or not. In fact, I do not believe any sane person would commit murder. an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. EXECUTE him, NOW .
I think he just to avoid the death penalty.
Lawyers are very clever at coming up with creative defense excuses when appealing to reduce a death penalty sentence BUT generally judges hearing these appeals cases tend to reject such defense lawyer psycho-babble.
Sanity or Insanity is a matter of game (takes sanity to plan a murder)..
As the sister of a murder victim I never believed in the death penalty but feel differently when it's brutal or happens to an infant/child or senior citizen. My nephew never got to meet his father and the murderer was never caught.
As long as they are live, they are a threat to society, which is cruel to both the victims and all other law abiding citizens.
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The Eighth Amendment’s Final Guardrail: Why the Law Forbids Executing the Insane
A convicted murderer in Alabama, David Lee Roberts, was scheduled to be executed for a brutal crime he committed over three decades ago. His execution has now been halted by a state judge, not because of any doubt about his guilt, but because of profound doubt about his sanity.
This decision forces us to confront one of the most unsettling and counterintuitive questions in our legal system: How can a man be competent enough to commit a horrific murder, but too incompetent to be punished for it?
This case is not about a legal loophole. It is a profound and difficult test of our nation’s commitment to the Eighth Amendment and its prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishments.” It forces us to examine the very purpose of capital punishment and the constitutional lines a civil society must draw, even when dealing with its most condemned citizens.
A Crime of Brutal Clarity, A Punishment of Legal Complexity
The facts of David Lee Roberts’s crime are not in dispute. In 1992, he shot Annetra Jones three times in the head as she slept, stole money, and set her house on fire. The brutality of the act is clear.
Yet, the path to his punishment has been complex; the jury in his case recommended life in prison, but a judge overrode their decision and imposed a death sentence—a practice that is now banned in Alabama.
Today, the complexity centers on Roberts’s mental state. His attorneys argue that he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, is plagued by delusions, and hears voices. They claim his “concept of reality is so impaired that he cannot grasp the execution’s meaning and the purpose or the link between his crime and its punishment.”
The judge has now paused the execution to allow the state to formally evaluate this claim.
The Supreme Court’s Competency Standard
This judicial stay is not an arbitrary act of mercy. It is a direct application of decades of constitutional law rooted in the Eighth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court has twice addressed this specific issue in landmark cases.
- In
Ford v. Wainwright(1986), the Court first established the principle that it is unconstitutional to execute a prisoner who has become insane while on death row. - In
Panetti v. Quarterman(2007), the Court clarified and strengthened this standard. It ruled that it is not enough for an inmate to simply be aware that the state is planning to execute them. The condemned prisoner must have a “rational understanding” of the reason why they are being put to death—a cognitive link between their crime and their punishment.
This is the exact constitutional standard the Alabama judge is now seeking to apply. It is the final guardrail our legal system has erected to ensure that the state’s ultimate punishment is not carried out on an individual who cannot comprehend its meaning.
Confronting the Paradox: “Fit to Kill, Unfit to Die”
The idea that a man who was sane enough to plot and commit a murder can later become too insane to be executed is, for many, a deeply unsatisfying and seemingly unjust paradox. It feels like a legal fiction that defies common sense and denies closure to the victims’ families.
Why should a murderer’s subsequent mental decline shield him from the punishment he earned?
The constitutional reasoning behind this principle, while difficult, is profound. The purposes of the death penalty are retribution and deterrence. Retribution is not mere revenge; it is a reasoned, moral response from society to a heinous act.
If the person being punished has no rational understanding of the connection between their crime and their fate, the act of execution loses its retributive purpose. It ceases to be a measured act of justice and becomes, in the eyes of the law, a simple act of killing by the state—an act devoid of the moral and legal reasoning that justifies it.
This is what the Eighth Amendment forbids as “cruel and unusual.”
The case of David Lee Roberts is a test of our nation’s deepest legal and moral commitments. It forces us to apply our highest principles to those who have committed the lowest of acts. The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on executing the insane is not a sign of weakness in our justice system, but of its profound strength. It is a solemn declaration that even when a man has acted with the utmost cruelty, the state will not respond in kind by extinguishing a life that can no longer comprehend the reason for its own end.
It's troubling to think someone capable of such a crime might escape the ultimate penalty due to questions of sanity, yet the Eighth Amendment is clear on preventing cruel and unusual punishments….