Competency Evaluation (law) - Competence To Be Executed

Competence To Be Executed

An additional evaluation is of the competence to be executed, that is the defendant must be capable of understanding why he is being executed and the effect execution will have.

The right to be competent to be executed resulted from the outcome of a United States Supreme Court case, Ford v. Wainwright, in which a Florida inmate on death row took his case to the United States Supreme Court, declaring he was not competent to be executed. He had been evaluated as incompetent but the Governor of Florida made an executive branch decision and signed the death warrant anyway. The court ruled that a forensic professional must make that evaluation and, if the inmate is found incompetent, provide treatment to aid in the inmate gaining competency in order that the execution can take place.

Providing treatment to an individual to enable that person to become competent to be executed places mental health professionals in an ethical dilemma. The National Medical Association takes the position that ethically it is a physician's duty to provide treatment, regardless of the patient's legal situation. Others feel that it unethical to treat a person in order to execute them. Most restorations of competency are accomplished through psychiatric medication.