Executing the Insane: The Case of Scott Panetti

A 30-minute clemency film. Color. 2007.

In 2007, Off Center Media made a clemency video about Scott Panetti for the Texas Defender Service.

Scott Panetti was tried for the capital murder of Joe Alvarado and Amanda Alvarado, his parents-in-law on September 8, 1992 in Gillespie County, Texas. He was subsequently sentenced to death on September 22, 1995. Panetti has an extensive history of mental illness, including schizophrenia, manic depression, auditory hallucinations and paranoia. Panetti was hospitalized, both voluntarily and involuntarily for mental illness fourteen times in six different hospitals before his arrest for capital murder in 1992. Following his conviction, Panetti’s former wife, and daughter of the victims, Sonja Alvarado, filed a petition stating that Panetti never should have been tried for the crimes as he was suffering from paranoid delusions at the time of the killings.

On 26 March 2008 the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas finds Scott Panetti competent to be executed.

Texas set an execution date of Dec. 3, 2014, for Panetti after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower court’s ruling allowing his execution to go forward. The execution was stayed by the U.S. Court of Appeals to consider recently filed issues.