Druery Denied Competency Hearing

Although Marcus Druery has been hearing voices for years, believes that he and his cell on Texas' death row are "wired," and has spent a significant amount of time in the prison system's psychiatric ward, a judge in Brazos County today denied to hold a competency hearing to determine whether the inmate is indeed sane enough to die. Druery was sent to death row for the kidnapping, robbery, and murder with two accomplices of 20-year-old Skyyler Browne in 2002. If his execution goes forward as scheduled on Aug. 1, Druery would be the 484th person executed in Texas since the reinstatement of capital punishment, and the 245th killed under the watch of Gov. Rick Perry. Unless a higher court, like Texas' Court of Criminal Appeals, steps in and reverses today's decision by Judge J.D. Langley, that is likely to happen. Druery's defenders, Katherine Black and Greg Wiercioch with the Texas Defender Service, say that Druery, a diagnosed schizophrenic, has no rational understanding of the reason he is set to die, and that to go through with the execution would violate the ban on executing those with mental illness. For more, see "Is Druery Sane Enough to Die?," Newsdesk, July 24.