The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by a death row inmate who argued his constitutional rights had been violated when he was forced to take anti-psychotic drugs that made him mentally competent to be executed.
Without any comment, the justices refused to review a federal appeals court ruling that the state does not violate the US Constitution by executing an inmate who has regained mental competency through forced medication that is part of appropriate medical care.
The case involved Arkansas death row inmate Charles Singleton. He was sentenced to death in 1979 for fatally stabbing a grocery store clerk during a robbery that year.
A prison psychiatrist in 1997 diagnosed Singleton as psychotic, delusional and suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
A prison medication review panel in 1997 ordered him to take anti-psychotic drugs after finding he posed a danger to himself and others.
After the medication took effect, Singleton's psychotic symptoms abated and the state made plans to execute him.
Singleton filed a lawsuit arguing the state could not constitutionally restore his mental competency through the use of forced medication and then execute him.
A federal judge rejected Singleton's argument that forced medication becomes unconstitutional once an execution date has been set because it then ceased to be in the inmate's medical interest.
The divided full appeals court ruled a state does not violate the Constitution when it executes a prisoner who becomes incompetent during a long stay on death row, but who regains competency through "appropriate medical care."
In appealing to the Supreme Court, Singleton's lawyer, Mr Jeffrey Rosenzweig, argued that giving an inmate involuntary medication so he can be executed violated constitutional due process and privacy rights and the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
"Execution of an insane person, or a person artificially made competent, is excessive," he said. The Supreme Court in 1986 declared it unconstitutional to execute the insane.