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Opinion

Texas should not execute a man who ate his own eye

Andre Thomas is unfit for society and incompetent for the legal standard of execution.

I have spent my career advocating for people with serious mental illness. But one does not need to be a mental health professional to see that Andre Thomas of Sherman is one of the most severely mentally ill prisoners in Texas history. It is absolutely appalling that the state of Texas plans to execute him April 5, 2023.

Five days after the crime for which he was convicted and sentenced to death, Thomas was sitting in his jail cell in Grayson County. He listened to the voices in his head — the voices that began when he was 9 years old and drove him to commit the crime — and followed the literal dictates of Matthew 5:29 (“If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee”) and gouged out his right eye.

Later, while on death row, Thomas removed his left eye and ate it. In his mind, he was preventing the government from seeing his thoughts.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has made it unequivocally clear that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of a person who is not competent — someone who doesn’t have enough of a connection to reality to understand why he is being put to death. (Ford vs. Wainwright in 1986; Panetti vs. Quarterman in 2007.)

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Thomas grew up in extreme poverty in a family with a long history of mental illness and substance abuse. By age 9, he was hearing voices in his head and began drinking to cope, as he had seen his family members do. At age 10, he attempted suicide, the first of many attempts over his lifetime. Although his mother was notified, she did nothing. After he tried to cut his wrists at age 13, his father suggested that long cuts down — versus across — his arms would be more efficient.

His deterioration during his teenage years was evident to all who knew him. On multiple occasions he told juvenile authorities that he wanted to kill himself and asked for help and counseling. Nothing happened. He told whoever would listen that he was living the same day over and over; he put tape over his mouth and refused to talk; he became convinced he was a fallen angel. Two days before the crime, he again attempted suicide because he could no longer live with the voices in his head. He was taken to the hospital, where a doctor concluded he was paranoid, hallucinating, and “really mentally ill.” But Thomas was left alone, and he walked away.

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The hospital issued an emergency detention order, directing that Thomas be apprehended immediately. Tragically, law enforcement never carried out the order.

Throughout Thomas’ life, while he deteriorated, he repeatedly sought help. Our mental health and public safety systems repeatedly failed him.

When Thomas took the lives of his estranged wife, Laura Boren, their son Andre, and her daughter Leyha Hughes, he was deeply psychotic and suffering auditory hallucinations. The voices in his head told him they were Jezebel, the anti-Christ, and an evil spirit. He attempted to remove their hearts, believing that would “set them free from evil.” He then stabbed himself in the heart and lay down to die. When he did not, he left, and later that day turned himself in.

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Thomas’ mental health has only deteriorated in the 17 years he has been in prison. For the past 13 years, he has been held at the Wayne Scott Unit in Brazoria County, where the most mentally ill prisoners are housed. He is given powerful anti-psychotic drugs, which only manage to mitigate his auditory and visual hallucinations.

Imprisoned and medicated, Mr. Thomas poses no threat to others. As I and more than a dozen other Texas mental health professionals stated in our recent letter to the Grayson County district attorney, keeping him in prison for the rest of his life would be a just punishment that would keep the public safe.

Greg Hansch is executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-Texas. He wrote this for The Dallas Morning News.

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