Just hours before a Texas man convicted of killing his two young daughters was set to be executed, a federal appeals court on Wednesday halted the the lethal injection to allow the inmate time to argue that he is not mentally competent.
Texas had intended to execute John David Battaglia on Wednesday, nearly 14 years after he was first sentenced to death. According to a summary of the case from the office of Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, Battaglia killed his daughters — Mary Faith, 9, and Liberty, 6 — by firing a volley of bullets at both girls while his ex-wife listened on the phone.
After shooting each girl multiple times, Battaglia went to a bar with his girlfriend and then a tattoo parlor for tattoos related to each girl, Paxton’s office said. Battaglia was arrested outside the tattoo parlor.
In a 2014 interview with the Dallas Morning News, Battaglia said he was “a little bit in the blank” about the shooting, and added: “I don’t feel like I killed them.”
An attorney filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court last week, writing that Battaglia is incompetent to be executed, citing psychiatrists who diagnosed him with bipolar disorder as well as Battaglia’s legal filings showing that he believes “separate conspiracies somehow converged to form some super-conspiracy to kill his daughters and have him executed.” (In this filing, the attorney noted he had not agreed to represent Battaglia unless he was appointed by a court; Battaglia had asked the court to appoint this attorney.)
In response, Paxton’s office wrote that Battaglia’s stay request should not be granted, arguing that his mental-health records do not show that he “is mentally ill, delusional, divorced from reality, on psychiatric medication, or otherwise does not comprehend his imminent execution.”
Battaglia had appealed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas for new legal counsel and a stay of execution, but was denied on both counts.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed that on Wednesday, determining that Battaglia had “effectively lacked counsel to prepare his claim of incompetency.”
In its opinion Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the appeals court said that because Battaglia’s attorney did not believe his work extended to state competency proceedings, Battaglia is correct in saying he was essentially abandoned on this count.
The appeals court called the situation “a rare circumstance,” but said Battaglia “has presented some evidence of mental illness and delusions” and determined that new legal representation needs time to try to present his claim that he is not competent.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Mark Berman
