A terrible mistake

Take execution off the table

As an experienced mental health practitioner and academic, I feel strongly that Arkansas would be making a terrible mistake if the execution of Jack Greene is carried out.

If Mr. Greene’s execution proceeds as planned on Nov. 9, the state will be enacting its most extreme sentence against a prisoner who is, because of his severe mental illness, a weak, vulnerable, and very sick person. It would betray our values and basic human decency to carry out an execution under these circumstances.

According to the mental health professionals who have examined him, Mr. Greene has suffered from fixed delusions for many years. These delusions cause him to harm himself, contort his body, eat from a sink, and exhibit many other bizarre and extreme behaviors.

One of Mr. Greene’s delusions is that he is in relentless, excruciating physical pain. He moves his body constantly in an effort to alleviate this pain. He stands on his head frequently and stuffs paper in his nose and ears until he causes himself to bleed.

Another of Mr. Greene’s delusions is that Arkansas corrections professionals and his attorneys are working in a conspiracy to prevent him from being extradited to North Carolina, where he fantasizes he could get medical care and relief from his imaginary pain. According to Mr. Greene’s writings, this conspiracy also includes the Arkansas attorney general’s office, former Arkansas governors, and attorneys in other states. Mr. Greene has written letters to courts, to the media, and to the U.S. Department of Justice in an attempt to expose those he believes are working against him.

If Arkansas carries out his execution just weeks from now, Mr. Greene will go to his death convinced that he is being punished as part of this conspiracy.

The history of mental illness and trauma in Mr. Greene’s family certainly made it more likely that Mr. Greene would suffer mental problems himself. When Mr. Greene was a toddler, Mr. Greene’s father killed himself in front of him. Mr. Greene’s mother died of an overdose immediately after assaulting her own father with a hammer. At age 11, Mr. Greene was sent to the Stonewall Jackson Juvenile Training School in North Carolina—a horrifying and notorious institution that committed well-documented sexual and physical abuse upon its charges, including Mr. Greene.

Mr. Greene has been examined multiple times by a psychiatrist, and has also been seen by a neuropsychologist. Those doctors agree that Mr. Greene suffers from a psychotic disorder. The staff at the prison where he is held in solitary confinement also recognizes that he is delusional.

Psychiatrist Dr. George Woods examined Mr. Greene twice, in 2011 and in 2017. He determined that Mr. Greene’s mental status has declined since 2011. Dr. Woods concludes that Mr. Greene “does not comprehend that his execution will be imposed as the final judgment of a court of law.”

In a crucial sense, the death sentence imposed on Mr. Greene in order to achieve fair and just punishment cannot be carried out. That opportunity is gone because Mr. Greene’s delusions make him incapable of understanding the meaning of the punishment.

If the state proceeds with his scheduled execution, Mr. Greene will die believing that his death is the result of a plot between Arkansas officials and his lawyers. So he can be executed, yes, but he can’t be executed for his crime.

Surely we want our criminal-justice system to recognize the individual circumstances of each case when making the ultimate determination of life or death. At the very least, Mr. Greene should be given a complete and independent mental health evaluation to determine if he is competent for execution.

But as a mental health professional, I believe Arkansas will be better off if the death penalty is taken off the table in Mr. Greene’s case. As his attorneys have argued, the execution of a man this ill would be “a miserable spectacle.”

I agree, and I would add that the execution of a man as ill as Jack Greene would diminish all Arkansans.