Gregory Thompson

A case of long-term, severe mental illness

Execution Date: 7 February 2006

2006 01 05: A STAY OF EXECUTION HAS BEEN ORDERED. READ TCASK'S PRESS RELEASE.

Greg Thompson is a 43-year old black man on Tennessee’s death row since 1985. He has been diagnosed as schizophrenic. He symptoms range from delusional thought processes, psychosis, both auditory and visual hallucinations, mania, paranoia, and self-mutilation. Prison doctors have treated him with psychotropic drugs since he arrived at the prison twenty years ago. Thompson’s prison file consists of over 4000 pages documenting his severe mental illness.

Thompson believes that he can survive execution by electrocution because his television shocks him when he touches it and he is “used to it.”

“Thompson is not presently competent to be executed,” said Dr. Faye Sultan who has monitored the mental health of. Thompson, “He lacks the mental capacity to understand the fact of the impending execution and the reason for it...”

When first hired by Thompson’s current lawyers Sultan diagnosed Thompson as “suffering from schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type” which would have made him “unable to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law” back in 1985 when the murder was committed.

“Although Mr. [Gregory] Thompson will sometimes acknowledge his involvement in the murder of Brenda Lane as he did on July 28 ... he simultaneously and irrationally believes that Ms. Lane is still alive and that he has paid her family money,” wrote Dr. Sultan.

“Thompson suffers from a severe psychotic mental illness,” she said, adding, “...Thompson's mental health has changed and become substantially worse.” He's experienced more recent ‘break-through’ hallucinations and an increase in severe suicidal thoughts,” Sultan recently wrote.

“Thompson continues to believe his execution is impossible,” she said.

Sentence out of proportion for severely mentally ill person

Greg Thompson’s guilt is not in question but his sentence of death is profoundly questionable. He kidnapped and killed Brenda Lane in Coffee County, Tennessee January 1, 1985. He used her car to escape what he, in a delusional state, believed was a gang of Ku Klux Klan members pursuing him and his companion, a white teenaged girl. When he was apprehended the next day, he quickly confessed and directed police to her body.

For some time prior to this tragedy, Thompson’s friends and family had noted extreme changes in his behavior. Thompson would behave irrationally, have fits of unreasonable crying, and suddenly snap and overreact to minimal stimuli, much as he did just before the sad kidnapping and killing of Brenda Lane. His family had tried to get Thompson psychiatric care, but had been unable to afford any. Since that time, Thompson has been diagnosed with severe schizophrenia. He can acknowledge that he killed Brenda Lane, but simultaneously believes that she is alive and working at Riverbend Penitentiary.

In 2001, District Attorney Paul Summers went before the Tennessee Supreme Court to argue that a conservator be appointed for Thompson because he was “incapable of making rational decisions.” In a nutshell, Summers argued that Thompson was not sane enough to be trusted with his own care. And, considering that Thompson has eaten his own feces and mutilated himself, the D.A. may have had a point. In 2004, however, whatever credibility Summers had was lost when he went back to the Court and, while continuing to acknowledge Thompson’s severe mental illness, asked that the conservator be removed and that an execution date be set.

That date was set for August 19, 2004. However the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati issued a stay. The appeals court found Thompson’s trial counsel “failed to render effective assistance of counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment by failing to conduct a reasonable investigation of Thompson’s social history and present powerful, readily available mitigating evidence, and by failing to pursue known leads that might have helped them to prepare their case in mitigation.”

Case exposes myriad problems with administration of capital punishment

Greg Thompson’s case is instructive to those trying to come to grips with the rationale for charges that the death penalty is administered both unfairly and arbitrarily. As a severely mentally ill human being Thompson could not adequately assist in his own defense; his case is emblematic of nearly every problem in the capital punishment system.

Thompson’s case is a textbook example of horribly incompetent legal counsel. Thompson could not afford legal counsel and was poorly represented at trial. His defense attorney only “rebutted” the state’s evidence that he was mentally competent with testimony from an industrial psychologist who said that Mr. Thompson “would be a good worker in prison.”

His attorneys failed to adequately understand his condition and therefore necessarily failed to deliver effective assistance of counsel to their severely mentally ill client.

Further, an all-white jury convicted Thompson, an African-American and an outsider to the small middle Tennessee community where Brenda Lane lost her life. An assistant district attorney in Coffee County reportedly said, “I hope they fry that nigger.” Almost 30 per cent of African-Americans sentenced to death in Tennessee since 1977 were similarly tried by all-white juries.

Lane was the niece of Jesse Blanton, the Shelbyville police chief at the time. She was also a former Shelbyville Times-Gazette reporter. “Brenda was a very popular and loved person,” said 65 year-old Vavial Jamison in October, 2005. Jamison, who testified against Thompson at his trial, says she supports the death penalty but is conflicted by it and could not carry it out herself.

“I am confused in my own mind, religiously,” she said. “I know the church doesn't support the death penalty. I know mine doesn't.” Jamison is United Methodist.

There can be no dispute that Greg suffers from a severe mental illness. Since his incarceration on death row prison doctors have treated Greg for his severe disorders. They have prescribed him anti-psychotic, anti-depressant, and mood-stabilizing medication. Greg suffers from delusional thought process, psychosis, flight of ideas, auditory and visual hallucinations, mania, paranoia, self-mutilation, and suicide attempts. His prison file consists of over four thousand pages documenting his severe mental illness. Medication therapy notwithstanding, Greg’s disorganized and delusional thought processes have never subsided.

2nd execution of a severely mentally ill man may well happen

Sadly, Thompson’s case is not an exceptional one. An estimated 25% of death row inmates suffer from severe mental illness, and it is estimated that 4 in 5 (or more) suffer from some form of mental affliction. The entire criminal justice system is overrun with people suffering from mental illness. Many of these people had, like Greg Thompson, sought out treatment but were denied. The failure to provide proper treatment and support to those suffering from mental illness is one which falls to us all, as a society. The fact that we choose to erase these errors by eliminating the evidence, by killing those mentally ill individuals who commit crimes, at least in part due to lack of proper treatment, only compounds the tragedy. On February 7th, if nothing is done, Greg Thompson will become only the latest victim of this system.

On March 19th, 2000 Robert Glen Coe, then taking more than 20 medications to manage his multiple mental illnesses, was killed by lethal injection as his own family members looked on in horror.

The Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing is working to knit together a network of mental healthcare advocates, providers, consumers, and social work professionals to openly challenge the execution of Greg Thompson, a severely mentally ill human being. If you know people we should contact please share that information. Set up presentations in your faith community by inviting a TCASK staff person to have a conversation with your fellow congregants. Contact the state office, a local chapter or mental health organization and monitor the TCASK web site for action updates.

To quote former NAMI-TN executive director Joyce Judge, “We should be treating the mentally ill, not killing them.”