Greg Thompson Receives Stay of Execution
Attorney General Again Denied Opportunity to Kill Severely Mentally Ill Man
Nashville: On Friday January 6th Federal District Court Judge J. Allan Edgar issued a stay of execution for Greg Thompson. He had been scheduled to die on February 7th.
Thompson’s attorney, a relieved Dana Hansen Chavis, stated that, “We will continue working hard every day in the hope that people will understand just how truly insane Greg is, what the State has done to disguise his insanity, and that he should not be executed.”
The stay was granted so that the Federal courts can consider the issue of whether or not Thompson is competent to be executed.
“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.”
“There is no question that Thompson, diagnosed with schizophrenia, is severely mentally ill,” said Randy Tatel, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing (TCASK). “His 4000 page mental health history documents his symptoms which range from delusional thought processes, psychosis, both auditory and visual hallucinations, mania, paranoia, and self-mutilation.”
Thompson believes that he can survive execution by electrocution because his television shocks him when he touches it and he is ‘used to it.’ He also believes that Brenda Lane, the women he killed while in a psychotic state in 1985, works at Riverbend prison where he is incarcerated.
“Our goal is to put an end to the State's efforts to execute Greg,” said Chavis “The State itself knows Greg is insane.”
Attorney General Paul Summers certainly knows that Thompson is insane. Summers told the Tennessee Supreme Court in 2001 that, “(Gregory Thompson) is incapable of making rational decisions. (He is) incapable of managing his person ... based upon his present mental condition.”
Dr. Sultan recently testified that, “...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.”
The National Alliance on Mental Illness – Tennessee (NAMI) has recently questioned why the state wishes to kill a severely mentally ill human being.
“It’s hard to understand what our Attorney General is thinking in this instance,” said Tatel. “We all, each and every one of us, mourn the tragic death of Ms. Lane, but seeking to poison to death someone so clearly insane as Greg Thompson certainly sends the wrong message to mental healthcare consumers in Tennessee.”