Texas tests the limits of the death penalty with mentally ill man on Death Row.
Maurie Levin, the attorney representing death row inmate Andre Thomas, talked about what it's like trying to communicate with her client."There is nothing that is linear about Andre's thinking," Levin said."He lives in an alternate world and there's no way to make rational sense of his understanding of what happened, or is happening. It makes no sense to me. It would make no sense to any of us.
Thomas began drinking at the age of 10, with his parents' encouragement. He also began hearing voices and made the first of what would be many suicide attempts. Another of these came at age 13, when his mother said she wished she'd aborted him. Thomas' father described it:"He went to my sink and got a butcher knife and began sawing on his wrist. I told him, 'Hell, if you want to kill yourself go out on the freeway and jump in front of a 18-wheeler.
The next morning Thomas carried three knives to Laura Boren's trailer. With one, he killed Boren, convinced she was Jezebel, the wife of Satan. Using a second knife to keep the blood of the victims separate, he killed Andre Jr., believing he was the Antichrist. Thomas used the last knife to kill Boren's 1-year-old daughter Leyha, believing she was a demon. He cut the hearts out of the children and attempted to cut out Boren's heart.
"The jury was not given the information that would have helped them to see Mr. Thomas' struggles or humanity," Levin later said."Without anything close to a full picture of Mr. Thomas' mental illness and the neglect and abuse that exacerbated it – which would likely have led the jury to see Mr. Thomas as deserving of compassion – the jury sentenced him to death."
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