HOUSTON — A Texas inmate whose attorneys say has a historical past of psychological sickness faces execution on Wednesday for killing his mom and burying her physique in her yard almost 20 years in the past.
Tracy Beatty, 61, is scheduled to obtain a deadly injection Wednesday night on the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was sentenced to demise for strangling his mom, Carolyn Click on, after they’d argued in November 2003 in her East Texas house.
Authorities say Beatty buried his 62-year-old mom’s physique beside her cellular house in Whitehouse, about 115 miles southeast of Dallas, after which spent her cash on medication and alcohol.
Beatty’s attorneys have requested the U.S. Supreme Courtroom to remain his scheduled execution, arguing he was being prevented from receiving a full examination to find out if he’s intellectually disabled and probably ineligible to be put to demise. He has had three prior execution dates.
His attorneys have requested that state jail officers permit Beatty to be uncuffed throughout psychological well being evaluations by specialists. The specialists argue that having Beatty uncuffed throughout neurological and different exams is essential to make an knowledgeable choice about mental incapacity and consider his psychological well being.
One professional who examined Beatty stated he “is clearly psychotic and has a posh paranoid delusional perception system” and that he lives in a “complicated delusional world” the place he believes that there’s a “huge conspiracy of correctional officers who . . . ‘torture’ him by way of a tool in his ear so he can hear their menacing voices,” Beatty’s attorneys wrote of their Supreme Courtroom petition.
In 2021, the Texas Division of Legal Justice put in place a casual coverage, citing safety and legal responsibility considerations, that it will solely permit an inmate to be unshackled throughout an professional analysis by way of a court docket order.
Federal judges in East Texas and Houston and the fifth U.S. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals in New Orleans have beforehand dominated towards Beatty’s request for an analysis with out handcuffs. The federal appeals court docket referred to as Beatty’s request a “delay tactic.” U.S. District Decide Charles Eskridge in Houston final week questioned why Beatty’s attorneys throughout years of appeals had not beforehand raised any declare referring to his psychological well being and that requiring handcuffs throughout such an analysis is “fairly merely, a rational safety concern.”
Whereas the Supreme Courtroom has prohibited the demise penalty for people who’re intellectually disabled, it has not barred such punishment for these with severe psychological sickness, in keeping with the Loss of life Penalty Data Middle.
In 2019, the Texas Legislature thought-about a invoice that might have prohibited the demise penalty for somebody with extreme psychological sickness. The laws didn’t move.
On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously declined to commute Beatty’s demise sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant a six-month reprieve.
Beatty had a “risky and combative relationship” together with his mom, in keeping with prosecutors. One neighbor, Lieanna Wilkerson, testified Click on had advised her that Beatty had assaulted her a number of occasions earlier than, together with as soon as the place he had “crushed her so severely that he had left her for lifeless.” However Wilkerson stated Click on had nonetheless been excited to have Beatty transfer in again together with her in October 2003 so they may mend their relationship.
However mom and son argued day by day and Click on requested her son twice to maneuver out, together with simply earlier than she was killed, in keeping with testimony from Beatty’s 2004 trial.
“A number of occasions (Beatty) had stated he simply needed to close her up, that he simply needed to choke her and shut her up,” Wilkerson testified.
If Beatty is executed, he could be the fourth inmate put to demise this yr in Texas and the thirteenth within the U.S. One other execution in Texas — the final one within the state in 2022 — is scheduled for subsequent week.
