Julie Cantor
Extract
The coalescence of involuntarily administered antipsychotic medications and competency for execution created a novel and controversial issue that became the basis of Singleton’s final appeal. The Arkansas Supreme Court stated the question succinctly: May the State ”mandatorily medicate [Singleton] with antipsychotic drugs in order to keep him from being a danger to himself and others when a collateral effect of that medication is to render him competent to understand the nature and reason for his execution[?]” Or, as Singleton put it, “Am I too sane to live, or too insane to die?” The cynical view of that question is that Singleton was clever and manipulative. Like most people, he would do just about anything to forestall his death. The more charitable view is that Singleton found an Achilles heel in the execution process and physicians’ involvement with it, one that created what some physicians consider to be an intolerable dilemma.
Cantor J. Of Pills and Needles: Involuntary Medicating the Psychotic Inmate When Execution Looms. Indiana Health L Rev. 2005;2(1):119-172.