I was reading an article on CNN, and it brought up some very interesting questions for me. I just wondered what everyone else thought about it. It seems that the state of Arkansas just executed a man who was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, who also committed a murder. It's not the particular case that interested me, so much as a tidbit I stumbled across in the middle of the article.

Prison doctors diagnosed Singleton, who was sentenced to death in 1979, with paranoid schizophrenia, and his condition has worsened over the years, Rosenzweig said. (Full story)

Singleton's case had attracted the attention of mental health organizations and death penalty opponents, who point to a 1986 Supreme Court decision barring executing the insane. A 1990 Supreme Court decision allows the forced medication of inmates in certain cases.

In February 2003, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that states may forcibly administer anti-psychotic medication to control a prisoner's behavior, even if doing so renders the prisoner eligible for execution
Taken from here

...Even if doing so renders the prisoner eligible for execution.... Now...how the hell can you take a person whom, without medication, is unaware of the consequences of their actions, convict them, force them to take medicine that is going to make them "sane", and then execute them? I am not condoning murder, what I am saying is that if you start off with someone who doesn't know right from wrong, or is suffering from genuine, medically diagnosed delusions and slap them into prison, start providing the medication they weren't able to get out of prison (check the mental health treatment for people in the US w/out medical insurance sometime) and they get better...is execution really "right" in this instance? Wouldn't a lifetime in a mental hospital or something be a better choice?

I'm not doing a good job of expressing myself here, and it's frustrating me. I just think this is wrong. I don't think the person should go free, and be held completely unresponsible for their actions, but it seems like suddenly medicating them and deciding they are then sane enough for execution seems wrong.