Judge rules murderer too mentally ill to execute

BOISE – Idaho death row inmate David Leslie Card is too mentally ill to be executed, a federal court has ruled.

Card, who shot and killed two Idaho Press-Tribune newspaper carriers in 1988, has been fighting his capital punishment sentence for nearly two decades. But for several years he has also been refusing the medication he needs to treat schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, attorneys say, and now is so deeply entrenched in his delusions that it is unlikely he will ever again be able to assist his attorneys in future appeals.

“His mental illness has rendered him presently unable to communicate rationally with his appointed counsel,” U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge ruled last week. “This case shall be stayed until such time as he regains competency.”

But that may never happen, according to the medical experts who examined Card.

“His mental state is grossly psychotic,” said Dr. Bruce Harry, the psychiatrist hired by the state to examine Card. “If he continues to go untreated with anti-psychotic medications his prognosis is very poor in the sense that he will not improve and might worsen considerably.”

“Mr. Card’s paranoid schizophrenia is now chronic,” said Dr. Robert Engle, the state’s psychologist. “After this length of time, even if Mr. Card began taking anti-psychotic medication consistently, it is unlikely that his symptoms would be sufficiently reduced that he would become competent” to proceed.

The state agreed to ask for Card’s case to be stayed – indefinitely put on hold, effectively taking the death penalty off the table – because the federal courts have generally held that inmates must be competent to assist their attorneys for death penalty appeals to move forward, said LaMont Anderson with the Idaho attorney general’s office.

Card, who turns 47 on Friday, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder for the June 5, 1988, shooting deaths of Eugene and Shirley Morey at a Nampa convenience store and was subsequently sentenced to death. Witnesses at the trial said Card was frustrated after a clerk at the store scolded him, and that he left to get his gun with the apparent intention of killing the clerk. But the clerk was gone when Card returned so he walked to a parking lot nearby and killed the Moreys, who were sitting in their car folding newspapers for delivery. At the time, 3rd District Judge Jim Doolittle called it a “cold-blooded, pitiless killing.”

Bruce Livingston, the attorney representing Card, said Card was suffering from schizophrenia at the time of the killings and had to be medicated so that he could stand trial.

Idaho is one of only four states where defendants may not plead innocent by reason of insanity, Livingston said, and be sent to a mental hospital instead of a prison.