Court Opinion

ID: 9494425
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:37:53.960136+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:24.766710
License: Public Domain

WOLLMAN, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
The Court’s opinion spells out in thorough detail the lengthy procedural history of this case and explains the reasons why it is that Singleton has been on death row now for one month short of twenty-two years.
No one can dispute that Singleton has had a record of confused, delusional thinking and bizarre behavior during the nearly quarter-century that his case has wended itself through the state and federal judicial systems, marked by the State’s need to from time to time involuntarily medicate him for his own safety and well-being.
That aside, what is at issue before us now is the answer to the question that we failed to ask the district court to address when we remanded the case to it in March of 2000, which is whether Singleton is currently Ford-competent. Having failed to pose that question to the district court, we now answer it ourselves.
I acknowledge that the Court’s answer has a certain appeal, for it brings to a conclusion what might seem to be an endless round of competency hearings made necessary by the inevitable delay between a post-hearing finding of competency and a subsequently set execution date. Had we asked the district court to answer the question we now answer ourselves, the outcome of this case may very well have been the same. Loath as I am to see any further delay in this case, and as tempting as it is to join the Court in concluding that it is time to bring the case to an end, I do not believe that it is properly within our province to do so.
One further thought. As I read the Court’s opinion, it does not purport to answer the difficult constitutional question whether a state may execute someone who is Ford-competent only as a result of the forcible administration of psychotropic drugs. Cf. United States v. Weston, 255 F.3d 873 (D.C.Cir.2001), petition for cert. filed (Sept. 5, 2001) (No. 01-6161).
With all due respect to the Court’s careful analysis of the history of this long-drawn-out case, I cannot join in the conclusion it reaches. Much as I dislike the prospect of even more delay, I believe that we should attempt to secure a more definitive answer to the question that we should have asked. If the answer to that question is that there can be no definitive answer, then the State will have failed to satisfy its Ford v. Wainwright burden. Unattractive as further delay might appear to be, I do not believe that further proceedings that might enable the State to impose in a constitutionally permissible manner the punishment that its judicial *872system has deemed to be the appropriate sanction for Mary York’s senseless death would constitute the exaction of mindless vengeance. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.