Charles Singleton was mentally ill. The courts declared him too unfit to be executed because he couldn't understand why he was being executed. Then the state forcibly medicated him with anti-pyschotic medication. Under medication, the Court ruled, he could understand and the execution could proceed. In other words, the court ruled that it's okay to forcibly medicate a mentally ill prisoner to make him sane enough to execute.

Singleton had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment by a federal appeal court panel on the grounds of mental illness. But the full court ruled last year that he could be executed if forcibly treated with drugs. The court decided that "involuntary medication followed by an execution" was preferable to "no medication followed by psychosis and imprisonment".

"Eligibility for execution is the only unwanted consequence of the medication" and did not have to be taken into account, it said. A minority of the judges presiding over the case took issue with the ruling, saying it was wrong to execute a man who is psychotic when not on medication.

"I am left with no alternative but to conclude that drug-induced sanity is not the same as true sanity," Judge Gerald Heaney wrote in a dissenting opinion. "Singleton is not 'cured'; his insanity is merely muted, at times, by the powerful drugs he is forced to take."

A 1986 US Supreme Court judgment banned the execution of the insane as one of the "cruel and unusual punishments" outlawed in the Bill of Rights.

Charles Singleton, age 44, was executed tonight. He heard voices until the very end.

Update: Here's an article explaining the issues.

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