Rest in Peace Scott Panetti
Dear Friends,
I wanted to let you know that Scott Panetti, a former Texas Defender Service client, died at a prison hospital in Galveston on May 26, 2025. Panetti, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, had spent over 30 years on Texas death row. He was 67 years old.
Panetti is most known for his 2007 case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Panetti v. Quarterman, in which then-Texas Defender Service lawyer Gregory Wiercioch successfully argued that the Fifth Circuit’s standard for determining competency to be executed was unconstitutional because it did not consider whether the person on death row had a rational understanding of the reason for their execution. The case was a landmark decision in the history of the death penalty and in the development of legal protections for criminally-convicted people with mental illness.
Beyond the Supreme Court headlines, Panetti’s case exposed how our criminal-legal system harms people with severe mental illness. Panetti was hospitalized for mental illness over a dozen times in the 1980s and 1990s and experienced schizophrenia, paranoid delusions, and hallucinations. He was profoundly religious and his delusions often featured God and devils. In September 1992, just two months after a recent psychiatric hopsitalization, Panetti killed his estranged in-laws. At the time, he was engulfed by auditory hallucinations; he believed he was directed by an individual named “Sarge” and was possessed by demons.
At his trial three years later, the trial judge let Panetti waive his right to counsel and represent himself in court. This decision was unaccetable by any moral or legal standard, yet it is not uncommon and occurs in Texas with disturbing frequency to this day. Wearing a purple cowboy costume and talking like a cowboy, Panetti called hundreds of “witnesses,” including Jesus Christ, President John F. Kennedy, and Anne Bancroft. That Panetti—a man with unquestionably severe mental illness—was allowed to represent himself at his own trial was a grotesque mockery of justice and everything our United States Constitution stands for. He was ultimately sentenced to death.
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s groundbreaking decision, Panetti’s fight wasn’t over. His lawyers spent years fighting for his life as Texas prosecutors continued to seek to execute him. In 2017, the State tried to execute Panetti without even notifying his lawyers at TDS.
In 2022, Wiercioch and a team from the Capital Habeas Unit for the Western District of Texas convinced a federal court that Panetti was not competent to be executed, and he lived the final years of his life no longer under the threat of execution. For more on Panetti’s life and legal case, you can watch the documentary Executing the Insane: The Case of Scott Panetti, produced by Texas Defender Service in partnership with Off-Center Media.
You can also read his recent obituary in the New York Times. At the time of his death, Panetti was represented by Wiercioch, now a Clinical Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, who has advocated for Panetti for 20 years, and an amazing team from Capital Habeas Unit for the Western District of Texas. We extend our gratitude to them for their service to Panetti until his dying day and our condolences to Panetti’s family.
With gratitude,
Burke Butler
Executive Director
Texas Defender Service
