August 4, 2025 • 42 mins
The Death Row Prisoners Suffering From Severe Mental Illness
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
After the murders, you stated that you were hearing voices I.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Did when he got to the chapter that said, if
you're right, I fin they cast it from yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
He plucked his eye out.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
In both Gary Green and Andre Thomas's cases, they killed
their partners and children, and so people look at this
and they say, I mean, this was just jealousy.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
That's the easy answer. Our jails and prisons are the
largest mental asylums we have in our country, especially on
death row.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Do you believe that he had severe mental illness.
Speaker 5 (00:40):
I believe he had mental illness. I don't believe he
had severe mental illness. Who weren't sparing his life?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Why should people with severe mental illness not be eligible
for the death penalty?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
They don't know what's happening.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
You could build them.
Speaker 6 (00:53):
I think that Minis getsophrenic as hell, But at the
same time he murdered kids.
Speaker 7 (00:58):
Mental illness does not excuse you from your actions.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Did anyone ever explain to you what schizophrenia was, what
bipolar was, what psychosis was.
Speaker 8 (01:08):
No.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
We're in Livingston, Texas, heading to the state's death row
to interview a man named Gary Green, who has a
long history of mental illness and who is scheduled to
be executed in two weeks. Texas regularly executes these inmates,
including people who have documented severe mental illness.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
So we're headed into death row.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
As these two buildings right here, it's an incredibly secure environment.
I mean you can see all of the barbed why
are here? You can see the watchtowers. I asked if
I could do a stand up just a few feet
to my right on the grass, and the media representative
here said I could.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Be shot on the spot.
Speaker 9 (02:40):
How are you doing?
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Hi?
Speaker 10 (02:41):
Gary?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yes? How are you doing?
Speaker 9 (02:44):
Due to the circumstance, I'm lourra.
Speaker 5 (02:47):
Gary Green stabbed his wife nearly two dozen times and
drowned his stepdaughter, Jasmine Montgomery.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
On September twenty one, two thousand and nine, Gary brutally
stabbed his wife, Levita Armstead to death drowned her six
year old daughter, Jasmine. He tried to kill Lavita's two
young sons, but they survived. I know you have a
long history with mental illness. What are your first memories
(03:14):
of feeling symptoms of that?
Speaker 9 (03:19):
It's an early childhood. My biological father, he was very
physical and verbal abusive to me, my mother and on
my mother's side, her family has a long history of
mental illness, documented and nondocumented. A lot of now been
in mintal of state hospitals medicated. They creation of madness
(03:41):
and mental illnesses combined with mine, and it's just a
cocktail of chaos.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Your brother said that you had untreated mental illness from
the time you were very little.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
What were you experiencing? What was going on in your mind?
Speaker 9 (03:55):
Oh, bipolarism, schizophrenia, hallucinations.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Did anyone ever explain to you, you know, what schizophrenia was,
what bipolar was, what psychosis was. No, did anyone ever say,
let's get you hope, let's figure this out.
Speaker 8 (04:11):
No.
Speaker 9 (04:16):
Growing up as a child in the seventies, it was
taboo to in a black community for your child or
people in your family to have mental illness. I had
no outlet, no one to talk to because those type
of things was not to be spoken. So that's why
(04:38):
it's it's always been a never end discycle, and even
to this day, people afraid to be treated because of
the stigma. Many times I tried to address those types
of things with my mother, and she didn't want people
to quote unquote to perceive her as having a child
(04:58):
with special needs in the stigma that that's placed upon that.
So does that make her a bad mother? No, people
does it all the time because it's a societal thing.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
When you and Levita got married, were you experiencing those
severe mental illness sometimes?
Speaker 9 (05:18):
Yes, I was dealing with the trumpa's always been there
because I've never been medicating, never had any therapy, never
been through any type of treatment. And she used to
always tell me all the time that I was bipolar
and I was schizophrenic. She was diagnosed to me, and
it used to always make me mad because I used
to tell her, why would you say things like that?
(05:40):
Would say that to you, Yes, but all along it's
not she was saying it out of malice. She was
saying that just out of concern and her own observation.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
She wanted to get your home right at Levi you deserging.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Gary agreed to go to a psychiatric hospital, where doctors
diagnosed him with major pressive disorder with psychotic features. They
prescribe medication typically used to treat schizophrenia. After four days,
Gary was able to leave voluntarily. I couldn't find.
Speaker 8 (06:11):
Out what we were getting. The bored and I didn't know
about we better married nay day, but you weren't born.
I feel betrayed, and then I got be bored for
the hay and became like that. My plan was to
kill out, thinking everybody, Yeah, so we can build in
(06:34):
the amplife. We all could have been my Handy's family.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
After the murders, you went to uh the police department.
You turn yourself in.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
You met with the detective, and the detective stated that
you were hearing voices when you when you committed those murders.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
I did all that's true.
Speaker 9 (06:58):
The things that I'm saying, I'm saying nothing to justify
my actions. It's like constantly reliving a bad movie that
every time you get to the groups and parts and
and the bad part is it, it always put on
pause and then it hit rewind and start to sing
(07:20):
every frame over over and over and over. Then it
plays to to that part and it goes back, and
it just keep going on and on and on.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
This is my whole life.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
And thank you very much. I'm really grateful to you.
Speaker 8 (07:33):
Carry I thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Okay, have a good day too, all right.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Of the roughly twenty four hundred people on death row
in America, at least one thousand have mental illness, though
experts say it's under reported.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Thank you, gentlemen. The case is submitted Riddle Heary arguments.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Next to.
Speaker 8 (08:20):
And against Wing Right.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
In nineteen eighty six, the Supreme Court ruled that the
quote insane cannot be legally executed. So to make their
case legal teams like Gary Greens often bring in experts
to testify on mitigating evidence or information about the defendant's
history that can sway a jury away from the most
severe punishment death. In Gary Green's case, his mental illness
(08:44):
was introduced in court, but it wasn't persuasive enough for
the members of the jury to spare his life. They
couldn't see past the brutality of his crime. Is this
a scan that you would ever use in your testimony?
Speaker 4 (09:03):
For instance, it is in that you know this might
be somebody who is suffering from mental illness. And while
scans don't diagnose mental illness, we do see common patterns
in certain illnesses and so we can piece it together
like a puzzle. We see the same types of symptoms
in different settings and different testing, and that helps us
make our diagnosis.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Doctor SHAWNA.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Garker is a board certified psychiatrist who has evaluated hundreds
of Death Row inmates for severe mental illness, including Gary Green.
I sat down with Gary Green and we talked for
an hour, and he was articulate, and he told me
a story.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
And I think some people may watch that and say
he doesn't seem sick.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
This is the nature of mental illness. Nobody has one
hundred percent bad days and nobody has one hundred percent
good days. We all have our ups and downs. And
this is an example of somebody that can be articulate
and intelligent and thoughtful and still have a major mental
illness because it's all about, you know, how do the
symptoms present on that particular day, in that moment with
(10:02):
the other factors and triggers together, and that person can
be very different. What is schizo effective disorder, well, schizoaffective
disorder is really a melding of two diagnoses, schizophrenia and
bipolar disorder. And so when somebody has schizophrenia, they have hallucinations,
they suffer from delusions, their thoughts may be disorganized, and
(10:22):
their behaviors may be disorganized. And then if you add
on top of that the bipolar mood swings so that
people can be high, they can be depressed. When you
combine those two together, that's schizoaffective disorder.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And what did you learn from Gary, I mean, what
were those sort of symptoms or what did he explain
to you that helped you to make that diagnosis.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Well, a lot of it was about paranoia, that he
wasn't sure who to trust, That he thought people were
his children were turning against him, his family was being
turned against him, and that he became convinced that that
was really going on.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Of course, there are plenty of people with schizo effective
disorder who don't commit violent crimes. How do you sort
of explain that from your expert point of view?
Speaker 3 (11:00):
It's somewhat perfect storm the way things happen.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Sometimes, You're right, most folks with mental illness are not
out there committing crimes. But when you throw on the
illegal drugs, alcohol, stress, then they take actions which they
think are justified or self defense or they had no recourse.
But when they're not psychotic, they would never have done that.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
You know, in Gary Green's case, there's a lot of
tragedy and there's a lot of death. You know, his victims.
The step since he tried to kill and have traumatized.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
What went wrong?
Speaker 4 (11:27):
I think it's, you know, it's an indictment of our
mental health system of not being able to get care
to the people who need it. So it becomes this
cycle where the violence just continues to get perpetuated.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
We're in Dallas, not too far from where Gary Green
killed Livita and Jasmine. And one of the things that's
just so hard about these cases is that the crimes
are so horribly violent because he didn't just kill those
two family members.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
He tried to kill his two step sons. Hey, hey,
let's see one of them.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
JT has agreed to talk to us and tell us
how that experience has affected his life.
Speaker 7 (12:11):
I don't feel like I ever got the chance to
be a kid like I feel like I've always been
worried about Gary getting out, or you know, focused on
how my life would have been if my mom was here,
my sister was here.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
What challenges have you had with mental health?
Speaker 7 (12:28):
So I got diagnosed with PTSD anxiety and depression. I've
had four suicide attempts and as far as like at home,
I can go like two days without sleeping.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
When you hear Gary and other people say, you know,
he had some your mental illness. He was hearing voices
what goes through your mind.
Speaker 7 (12:47):
I think a lot of people on the outside always
trying to tell you what's going on, and I think
people try to make excuses for others as well. And
one thing we have to realize is that mental illness
does not excuse you from your actions. Like I have
mental illness, but it's up to you to have the
(13:08):
strengths to either get help or silence those voces yourself.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Did you ever see any signs of psychosis or mental illness?
Speaker 1 (13:15):
And Gary?
Speaker 7 (13:16):
Oh, I honestly don't think there's nothing wrong with Gary.
I think that in a fit of rage, he did
something that you know he shouldn't have done. I think
he knew exactly what he was doing.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Do you know that your mom pushed him to get
help before all this happened. I don't know for sure.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I mean by his telling and I don't know if
he's credible, Okay, but he said he didn't think he
had anything wrong with him, and your mom said you
got to go get checked out. They both apparently went
to this hospital and we pulled the medical records from it,
and they ended up diagnosing him and holding him, and
then he was able to leave.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
And it was shortly aftergot that everything happened. Does that
change the way you feel at all?
Speaker 4 (14:00):
A little bit?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
A little bit?
Speaker 7 (14:02):
That's basically saying, hey, we know there's something wrong with you,
but we're going to go ahead. I'll let you do
whatever you want to And that, of course I would
feel like led to the death of my mother, my sister.
Speaker 11 (14:13):
In the US today, one person out of every twenty
you must undergo treatment and a mental institution.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
In the nineteen fifties, politicians enacted a deinstitutionalization movement, which
removed people with severe mental illness from hospitals and put
them back into their community.
Speaker 12 (14:30):
Electoral shock therapy may be recommended for other disorders.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Because legislators believed that mental hospitals were inhumane, facilities closed down,
and Texas went from having one hundred and ninety beds
per one hundred thousand residents in nineteen fifty five to
fewer than eight today. Incarceration rates for these individuals went up.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
We're talking about millions of people suffering with severe mental illness.
Once we couldn't put them in hospitals anymore, have beds
for them anymore?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Where are they going to go?
Speaker 4 (14:59):
Are jails in? Prisons are the largest mental asylums we
have in our country, especially on death row.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Needing help from his wheelchair heavily guarded ended handcuffs, Andre
Thomas went from patient to prisoner this afternoon.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Andre Thomas is known as one of the most severely
mentally ill death row inmates in America.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Andre Thomas is on death row for the two thousand
and four murder of his ex wife, their four year
old son, and her thirteen month old daughter.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
In the middle of a psychotic episode, Andre broke into
his estranged wife, Laura Bourne's apartment early in the morning
and stabbed her and her two children to death. According
to court records, Thomas believed Andre Junior was the Antichrist
in the thirteen month old, a related evil spirit. Following
God's orders, he said, he cut out the children's hearts,
(15:53):
believing that would free them from demons. He was sentenced
to death in two thousand and five. Peterson Kate was
assigned as a defense lawyer behind the lead attorney.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Right before his arraignment, he was reading the Bible. He
was fixated on it, and when he got to the
chapter that said, if you're right, I offend the cast
it from yourself.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
That's what he did. Literally, he plucked his eye out.
Speaker 6 (16:17):
Since the incident in two thousand and four, Thomas has
taken out both of his eyes, eating one of them.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
And after that they determined he might not be competent,
so let's send him away. So they sent him away
to the state hospital. They treated him with massive amounts
of drugs, got him competent, and brought him back for trial.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
So wait a second.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
The state took him out of custody, put him in
a mental health facility, gave him drugs in order to
make him competent to be tried in a capital case.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yes, and let me clarify something. There is a difference
between competency to scan trial and insanity. Potency means that
you're mentally well enough to help your attorney with your defense,
you understand the charges against you, if you're able to talk,
communicate that sort of thing. The insanity is whether or
(17:17):
not you knew your actions at the time of committing
them were right or wrong.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
So it's two different standards, two different things.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
But if you don't understand why you're being executed or
what execution is you are constitutionally protected from the death
penalty in theory. Before the murders, Andrey knew something was wrong.
He checked himself into a mental hospital, which applied for
an emergency detention order. It should have kept him there
for seventy two hours. Instead he walked out in less
(17:49):
than a day.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
We basically wanted to convince a jury and get them
to see how sick he was. That was a goal,
was for them to understand that, for lack of a
better term, a normal human being does not commit these
sort of atrocities, does not pluck out their own eye,
and then does not sit there casually and just look
(18:12):
at you and can't carry on a conversation.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Why do you think the jury didn't buy that he
was not guilty by reason of insanity?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
In talking to the jury, they didn't care about mental illness.
All they cared about was making sure that someone who
had so brutally murdered three people did not walk in
sunshine again. All it took them was looking at the
video and crime scene photographs for them to make that determination.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
So they actually saw the victims.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Oh yes, So the brutality of the crime overshadowed any
of those mitigating factors like severe mental illness.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Absolutely, what was Andre doing during the trial. He loves sugar,
so we fed him skittles and he would eat skittles
all day long. The only time he showed any emotion,
any question about what was going on was when the
judge sentenced him to death, and he wasn't reacting to that.
(19:18):
I was standing next to him, bawling my eyes out,
and he was patting me on the shoulder, telling me
that it would be okay, that everything was okay, I
would be okay. So he wasn't even reacting. He didn't
(19:42):
understand what was happening. He was reacting to my emotions
standing next to him.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
He had no idea that he had just been sentenced
to death.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
None.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Sorry, What makes you emotional about recalling that moment?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Well, having someone's life in your hands and failing, it's
very difficult.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
And that's what I lived with.
Speaker 11 (20:25):
That apartment there is the one we used to live in.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Bryant Hughes was Laura's boyfriend at the time of her death.
They lived together here in this complex and shared a daughter, Leah,
the thirteen month old murdered by Andre.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Do the memories of that day come back to. Yeah, yeah,
it does.
Speaker 11 (20:44):
The thing that pops out to me here is remembering
all the teddy bears and the stuffed animals that was
laid outside the apartment.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
What was Laura like?
Speaker 11 (20:57):
A happy, wonderful person to be around, full of passion, empathy,
a sweetheart.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Your little girl Leo was only thirteen months old. What
do you remember about her?
Speaker 11 (21:13):
She was a daddy's girl. She never wanted me to
put her down. A little Andre too, His smile could
brighten the room. I loved him dearly.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Did you ever see any violent tendencies or any erratic
behavior from Andrea?
Speaker 9 (21:30):
Never?
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Personally.
Speaker 11 (21:31):
I never even heard him raise his voice.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Did Laura ever mention to you that she was scared
of him or nervous?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
No? No. The night before the crime, Andre went over
to Laura and Brian's apartment for a few hours to
visit his son.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
How did he seem that night?
Speaker 11 (21:48):
Some people might call him weird or not mainstream acting
or whatever, you know, but.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
He it's troubled. Can you give an example, like.
Speaker 11 (22:04):
He had something on his mind. I could tell you
wanted something off his chest. We didn't know how to
go about it.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
How has this affected your life since then.
Speaker 8 (22:14):
Bad.
Speaker 11 (22:16):
Let's just sum it up in one world word bad.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Have you been able to find happiness?
Speaker 11 (22:21):
Well, I'll laugh and smile and joke and happiness. I'll
probably plan happiness when I'm dead.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Andre Thomas is forty years old and has a date
to be executed this year at the same Texas death
chamber as Gary Green. From a medical perspective, is there
any difference really between Gary Green and Andre Thomas?
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Not from a psychiator standpoint, No, in terms of their
mental illness, The diagnoses, the way it can affect somebody
can be different. But I think it's just a matter
of degree. I mean, it just depends on the severity
of the symptoms and when they strike a person. And additionally, again,
people can be outwardly psychotic. They can do things like
(23:05):
mister Thomas did that's really extreme. But you can also
be quiet about it and not talk to people about
it because you're paranoid and so you hold that stuff in,
don't tell people what you're experiencing.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Do you think they should be judged differently by a
jury or by those considering whether they should be eligible
for a death sentence.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
No, I don't think so, because I know how it
affects people deeply and how it disorders their mind. And
that's important that the jury be able to be educated
on those things, because they have in their minds what
they think Siberimnimalis is, and that can be very different
from how it presents in the real world.
Speaker 5 (23:45):
They may argument in the Gargering case, where the facts
of the crime they were so heinous, so much blood,
so much evil in the state's mind, and then just
seeing that little girl floating in the bathtub, I just
think that you just can't get over that.
Speaker 13 (24:06):
I to sing, America, we are darker people. They sent
us to eat in the kitchen when company come. But
we laugh and eat will and grows drawn. Tomorrow we'll
be at the table when company come. Nobody there says.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
To us, eat in the kitchen.
Speaker 13 (24:30):
Besides, you'll see how beautiful we are and be ashamed
we too are America.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
It's been thirteen years since Gary Green was sentenced to death.
To this day, Kobe Warren, one of his defense lawyers,
and Josh Healey, the prosecutor, still disagree on whether Gary's
mental illness should have been considered at sentencing.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
What were the mitigating factors that you were focused on.
Speaker 14 (24:56):
I mean there were some mental health issues, kind of
rough bringing, poverty, not a super stable home.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Josh, do you believe that he had severe mental illness.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
I believe he had mentaloniness. I don't believe he had
severe mental illness too. Warrn't sparing his life?
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I think one of the hardest questions in this conversation
is what is that threshold. It's not like Gary showed
up to court and said, like, by the way, I
have mental illness.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Family history.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Nisan o'carter, his's brother testified that he remembers his brother
acting very strangely, hearing voices, hearing demons. And then you
hear from the physicians psychiatrists who say he has schizo
effective disorder of bipolar type, he has hallucinations, he hears
voices that tell him to do things.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Why wasn't that enough for you?
Speaker 5 (25:38):
Because during cross examination of their doctors and during cross
examination of their witnesses, we were able to show that
he had some mental illness, but it didn't rise to
the level as you are describing.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
The Gary Green first Andre Thomas, they had similar diagnoses.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Do you have to pull your eyeballs out in order
to get executed.
Speaker 5 (25:58):
Let me respond to you like this, if you took
both their diagnoses and actions and got a one hundred
random people and said who's more mentally messed up?
Speaker 3 (26:06):
But it's subjective. I think that's what's interesting is all
of this is subjectives.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
We're just hearing dramatic details about how about self harm,
about what people are doing, about erratic behavior, but none
of it feels scientific to me.
Speaker 14 (26:20):
I would say, there absolutely has to be some sort
of chimicalin balance to actually literally and physically pull out
your own eyeball and eat it. It is subjective, but
it's more subjective for the jurors, like they're the ones
that has to make that determination, Like they can put
more credence in what a particular expert says on the
defense side or the state side, it's up to them,
because honestly, what it is, it's mercy is if someone
(26:44):
has enough grace and mercy in their heart to say, yeah,
this is awful, it's this terrible and this person he
did these things. But does it warn't that he die?
Speaker 3 (26:53):
With Carrie Green's case, do you have any regrets whatsoever?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
The jury an extraordinary amount of power when it comes
to sentencing defendants to death, and the jury is a
reflection of the public. More than half the country still
wants capital sentences carried out. Seventy seven percent of Republicans
and forty six percent of Democrats favor the death penalty,
and that's especially true in Texas, a state that's killed
(27:20):
more than four times the amount of people over the
last fifty years than any other state. We're in Huntsville, Texas,
at the Texas Prison Museum to meet former warden Jim Willett.
He oversaw eighty nine executions here and I want to
talk to him about how ingrained the death penalty is
in the culture.
Speaker 12 (27:41):
Those three pistols in there are not real. They're carved
out of wood and painted, so they were made by
inmates and they were going to use them to attempt
an escape. I find that very interesting.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
So what is this that we're looking at.
Speaker 12 (27:55):
This is a model of the Huntsville prison. The Walls
unit is the oldest and in Texas. It took in
its first inmate in eighteen forty nine, and it is
where all of the executions that the state of Texas
has ever done have taken place. Prior to that, it
was up to each county. This is the Texas Electric
(28:16):
Chair Old Sparky. It was first used in nineteen twenty
four and used up through nineteen sixty four, and three
hundred and sixty four men died in that chair.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
What role has the death penalty played in the state
of Texas.
Speaker 12 (28:32):
Just basically, it's the most severe form of punishment that's here.
I think that the people of Texas have kind of
had the attitude that there are certain crimes that if
you commit, we're going to consider in your life. And
I think it's just also our character from the time
we ever became a state. Vast majority of the people
(28:53):
in Texas are Christians, and I think Christians typically support
the death penalty.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
I believe in the death penalty, and he killed them
three people. I believe in the Texas law.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
It is what it is. Brian Hughes's daughter Brittany was
supposed to be at the apartment the morning Andre Thomas
killed her little sister, but ended up staying with her mother,
Jennifer instead. They both still struggle with post traumatic stress.
Speaker 15 (29:29):
Honestly, after that day, I don't remember a lot of
anything because I was so traumatized anything. Everything at that
point especially most of my life after that is a
complete blur. And I never understood that how somebody go
from just being so cool and trying every kid like
(29:50):
is basically his and just is snapped one day.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
I mean when you when you hear that he had
severe mental illness, that he was suffering from schizo effective disorder,
I mean, what goes through your mind?
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Now you want to know my personal opinion.
Speaker 6 (30:05):
I think it's bullshit, and I think that it's a
case of oh, I can't have you, won't.
Speaker 12 (30:10):
Nobody have you?
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Can?
Speaker 6 (30:12):
I tell my opinion.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Also, that's my personal opinion.
Speaker 6 (30:16):
I suffer from mental health as well. I think that
he had a lot of mental stuff going on and
he didn't know how to handle it.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
So you believe that that he has severe mental illness,
I do. Do you think his mental illness should be
a reason that he is not executed?
Speaker 6 (30:36):
I'm mixed about it.
Speaker 15 (30:37):
I am.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
I think that minis schizophrenic as hell. But at the
same time, he murdered kids and that's not okay. I
don't want no hate or anything things, but I prefer
that he would not be here anymore.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
And Jennifer, when you see Andre's name in the newspaper
still to this day, and everyone's too big, everyone's to
what should happen with him? Should he be executed?
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Should he not? I mean, what's your opinion.
Speaker 15 (31:05):
I don't think he is mentally ill at the time,
whenever he walked in, kicked in that door to that
apartment and killed those three people, he was not mentally ill.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Did tell me how that is possible?
Speaker 10 (31:19):
It's not, it's not.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
I don't care.
Speaker 6 (31:21):
I'm not right in the head and I haven't been,
maybe ever since this. Maybe that's when it started.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
I don't know it did.
Speaker 6 (31:29):
I have history of cutting myself and burning myself. So
why did you go to some mental hospital? It's because
my family once went to other than that.
Speaker 8 (31:35):
I don't go.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
She has she's my god prednant. I'm so sorry. She
is a cutter, she is a burner. She's done it
for about twelve years.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Now.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Do you feel that all of these symptoms, the severe
mental illness that you have now, do you think it's
because of what Andre did?
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Yeah? I was a fine I was fine. I was
a cool child.
Speaker 6 (32:01):
I chilled, I didn't really have any worries, and then
after this happened, I completely changed, Like I'm just like stuck.
Speaker 8 (32:24):
Prist.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Chair Rose moves that house for forty seventy five woldout
beer for favorite full house.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
The reputation to be passing your credent clerical, please call
the role Charefrank, Vice Chair Rose.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Representative Tony Rose is sponsoring a bill that would allow
criminal defense teams to introduce mitigating factors at the start
of the trial process instead about the sentencing phase.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
HB seven seven by Rose with the applicability of the
death penalty to a capital fence committed by the person
with severe mental illness.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
The Chair recognized Miss Rose to explain the bill.
Speaker 16 (32:57):
Thank you, missus, speaker. I want to just see you
a little bit about why I'm so passionate about this.
What is HB sevent seven Houseville seven twenty seven is
a bill that exempts person would severely mental illness from
the death penalty. It's just exempts them. It doesn't freedom
of their crime. It's a process that's done on a
(33:20):
case by case basis, and it has to be done upfront,
which is different from when a person is sentenced to
death day all of the examinations are done on the
back end.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Does that land with your Republican colleague.
Speaker 16 (33:33):
No one of them mentioned that they were pro life
of innocent light. But because a lot of people here
are not here to govern, they're not afraid to just
you know, not support good policy because they want to
make sure they make the right conservative marks on a
school cards.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Why is this still so important to you.
Speaker 16 (33:54):
I spend majority of my professional career in correctional mental health.
I saw herations or individual would commit a crime and
they were psychotic at the time, and then once they're treated,
to just see a totally different person, the person which
you should get life in prison without the possibility of parole,
instead of executing a person because of an illness that
(34:16):
they were born with.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
And when folks say, oh, it's a slippery slope, everyone's
claiming that they have, you know, severe mental illness, and
this is just going to let people get off.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
What do you say to that. I say to that
that they need to be educated on mental illness. Are
you familiar with Gary Green's case?
Speaker 7 (34:32):
I am.
Speaker 16 (34:33):
I'm unfamiliar with this case. I actually was employed at
the Dallas County Jail at the time he committed his crime.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
The young lady that he murdered was my sorority sister.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Knowing somebody who was the victim of one of these
brutal crimes by someone who had severe mental illness. I mean,
is it hard to have that personal connection and still
advocate for this bill.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 16 (35:01):
I see of how the lack of access the mental
health services has devastated my community. I feel like these
people may be dangerous, but they're just people that need
to be treated the appropriate way.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
What are your thoughts on a bill like HB seventy seven.
Speaker 7 (35:24):
I don't think it's a bad idea, but I think
it requires major stipulations on what y'all are doing to
diagnose these people people like Gary, I would need to
see some type of testing, you know, something that for
sure lets me know that this person has a mental
illness that is seriously affecting them and they're not just using,
(35:45):
you know, just as a crutch.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
The thing that's tricky is that he had a diagnosis
from a doctor that was schizophactive disorder of bipolar type.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
So I mean this law could have exempted him, right,
how do you feel about that? It's really complicated.
Speaker 7 (36:01):
I honestly, if it would have exempted him, I probably
would It probably would have been a lot worse. Ain't
no telling what my mom how she was reacting when
she was getting stabbed by you, you know, telling how
my sister was reacting when you were holding her head underwater.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
I just don't feel like that's fair. In theory, you're
open to this idea, but when you're the victim and
you think about this person, it's like it's harder. It's
a harder question.
Speaker 7 (36:30):
Once again, no matter how oh we are, no matter
what we're diagnosed with, I feel like we're all responsible
for our actions. And unless you have some type of
mental illness that makes it to where you just can't
take care of yourself and you're not competent enough to
you know, doing things by yourself, don't see any reason
why you should be excused or for taking somebody's life.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
It's been nineteen years since Andre committed his crimes. Jennifer
still thinks about the children who died and how her
daughter could have been one of them.
Speaker 7 (37:26):
Those poor babies.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Lord didn't deserve that.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
No nobody deserves that. That's premeditated murder. I don't care
(37:52):
how you look at it. It's premeditated murder.
Speaker 10 (37:55):
You killed your strange.
Speaker 14 (37:56):
Wife, your son, your son that you made with your
wife and her thirteen month old baby.
Speaker 12 (38:12):
He played God the day of.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
March twenty seven, two thousand and four.
Speaker 12 (38:17):
He played God three times.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
On March seventh, people gathered from around the country to
protest and pray for Gary Green.
Speaker 10 (38:36):
If this execution goes fourth tonight, we're a Texas's five
hundred and eighty second.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
We're in Huntsville, Texas, and Gary is scheduled to be
executed in just a few hours. As the crowd waited
for word on Gary Green's execution, news broke about Andre Thomas.
Speaker 10 (39:01):
Andre Thomas was just granted a stay of execution.
Speaker 9 (39:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
In both Gary Green and Andrea Thomas's cases, they've killed
their partners and children, And so people look at this
and they say, I mean, this was just jealousy.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
That's the easy answer. But my experience is these are
much more complicated than that. What may seem obvious on
the outside maybe far from it once you actually delve
into how that person was thinking.
Speaker 10 (39:30):
You know, how anybody could think that somebody who pulled
their eyeballs out and actually ate one of them is
mentally same.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
A district judge delayed Andre's execution allowing his lawyers more
time to argue for his life. Why should people with
severe mental illness not be eligible for the death penalty?
Speaker 2 (39:56):
They don't know what's happening to them executing a body.
The mind's not there.
Speaker 10 (40:24):
The things that the execution has happened, and their groom
has been legally launched by the state of Texas.
Speaker 17 (40:41):
I pray that someone will get that cross off the
top of that building. Die Jesus, Buddha, whoever you pray to.
It doesn't have anything to do with killing our neighbors.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
What was it like for you to be there witnessing
curious execution?
Speaker 7 (41:03):
I was just kind of there, like, man, this is
too good for you. You know, my mom didn't get
to go to sleep. I just wish it would have
been more deserving of what he did.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Do you think that you'd be sitting where you were
today if you had.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Gotten help as a child.
Speaker 9 (41:22):
Well, I know it wouldn't because, uh, that was the
only era in my life that uh set the foundation
for everything that transpire into my life.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
How are you doing? How are you feeling right now?
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Uh?
Speaker 9 (41:38):
Well, a lot of mixed emotions, because that's the question
I asked myself every day and and uh self evaluation
twenty four hours a day, and uh, nobody wanted to
be killed. Nobody. You know, you call it execution, but
uh it's it's still a killing. And uh, I don't
have a problem with anybody trying to do any harm
to me.
Speaker 8 (41:57):
I I don't.
Speaker 9 (41:57):
I never been the type person that justify nothing that
I do. I didn't do. And I had the opportunity
to prepare myself on many levels. But at the end
of the day, I look at the big picture, and
the big pictures it's just a cycle of lick
After the murders, you stated that you were hearing voices I.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Did when he got to the chapter that said, if
you're right, I fin they cast it from yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
He plucked his eye out.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
In both Gary Green and Andre Thomas's cases, they killed
their partners and children, and so people look at this
and they say, I mean, this was just jealousy.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
That's the easy answer. Our jails and prisons are the
largest mental asylums we have in our country, especially on
death row.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Do you believe that he had severe mental illness.
Speaker 5 (00:40):
I believe he had mental illness. I don't believe he
had severe mental illness. Who weren't sparing his life?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Why should people with severe mental illness not be eligible
for the death penalty?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
They don't know what's happening.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
You could build them.
Speaker 6 (00:53):
I think that Minis getsophrenic as hell, But at the
same time he murdered kids.
Speaker 7 (00:58):
Mental illness does not excuse you from your actions.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Did anyone ever explain to you what schizophrenia was, what
bipolar was, what psychosis was.
Speaker 8 (01:08):
No.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
We're in Livingston, Texas, heading to the state's death row
to interview a man named Gary Green, who has a
long history of mental illness and who is scheduled to
be executed in two weeks. Texas regularly executes these inmates,
including people who have documented severe mental illness.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
So we're headed into death row.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
As these two buildings right here, it's an incredibly secure environment.
I mean you can see all of the barbed why
are here? You can see the watchtowers. I asked if
I could do a stand up just a few feet
to my right on the grass, and the media representative
here said I could.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Be shot on the spot.
Speaker 9 (02:40):
How are you doing?
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Hi?
Speaker 10 (02:41):
Gary?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yes? How are you doing?
Speaker 9 (02:44):
Due to the circumstance, I'm lourra.
Speaker 5 (02:47):
Gary Green stabbed his wife nearly two dozen times and
drowned his stepdaughter, Jasmine Montgomery.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
On September twenty one, two thousand and nine, Gary brutally
stabbed his wife, Levita Armstead to death drowned her six
year old daughter, Jasmine. He tried to kill Lavita's two
young sons, but they survived. I know you have a
long history with mental illness. What are your first memories
(03:14):
of feeling symptoms of that?
Speaker 9 (03:19):
It's an early childhood. My biological father, he was very
physical and verbal abusive to me, my mother and on
my mother's side, her family has a long history of
mental illness, documented and nondocumented. A lot of now been
in mintal of state hospitals medicated. They creation of madness
(03:41):
and mental illnesses combined with mine, and it's just a
cocktail of chaos.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Your brother said that you had untreated mental illness from
the time you were very little.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
What were you experiencing? What was going on in your mind?
Speaker 9 (03:55):
Oh, bipolarism, schizophrenia, hallucinations.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Did anyone ever explain to you, you know, what schizophrenia was,
what bipolar was, what psychosis was. No, did anyone ever say,
let's get you hope, let's figure this out.
Speaker 8 (04:11):
No.
Speaker 9 (04:16):
Growing up as a child in the seventies, it was
taboo to in a black community for your child or
people in your family to have mental illness. I had
no outlet, no one to talk to because those type
of things was not to be spoken. So that's why
(04:38):
it's it's always been a never end discycle, and even
to this day, people afraid to be treated because of
the stigma. Many times I tried to address those types
of things with my mother, and she didn't want people
to quote unquote to perceive her as having a child
(04:58):
with special needs in the stigma that that's placed upon that.
So does that make her a bad mother? No, people
does it all the time because it's a societal thing.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
When you and Levita got married, were you experiencing those
severe mental illness sometimes?
Speaker 9 (05:18):
Yes, I was dealing with the trumpa's always been there
because I've never been medicating, never had any therapy, never
been through any type of treatment. And she used to
always tell me all the time that I was bipolar
and I was schizophrenic. She was diagnosed to me, and
it used to always make me mad because I used
to tell her, why would you say things like that?
(05:40):
Would say that to you, Yes, but all along it's
not she was saying it out of malice. She was
saying that just out of concern and her own observation.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
She wanted to get your home right at Levi you deserging.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Gary agreed to go to a psychiatric hospital, where doctors
diagnosed him with major pressive disorder with psychotic features. They
prescribe medication typically used to treat schizophrenia. After four days,
Gary was able to leave voluntarily. I couldn't find.
Speaker 8 (06:11):
Out what we were getting. The bored and I didn't know
about we better married nay day, but you weren't born.
I feel betrayed, and then I got be bored for
the hay and became like that. My plan was to
kill out, thinking everybody, Yeah, so we can build in
(06:34):
the amplife. We all could have been my Handy's family.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
After the murders, you went to uh the police department.
You turn yourself in.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
You met with the detective, and the detective stated that
you were hearing voices when you when you committed those murders.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
I did all that's true.
Speaker 9 (06:58):
The things that I'm saying, I'm saying nothing to justify
my actions. It's like constantly reliving a bad movie that
every time you get to the groups and parts and
and the bad part is it, it always put on
pause and then it hit rewind and start to sing
(07:20):
every frame over over and over and over. Then it
plays to to that part and it goes back, and
it just keep going on and on and on.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
This is my whole life.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
And thank you very much. I'm really grateful to you.
Speaker 8 (07:33):
Carry I thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Okay, have a good day too, all right.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Of the roughly twenty four hundred people on death row
in America, at least one thousand have mental illness, though
experts say it's under reported.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Thank you, gentlemen. The case is submitted Riddle Heary arguments.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Next to.
Speaker 8 (08:20):
And against Wing Right.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
In nineteen eighty six, the Supreme Court ruled that the
quote insane cannot be legally executed. So to make their
case legal teams like Gary Greens often bring in experts
to testify on mitigating evidence or information about the defendant's
history that can sway a jury away from the most
severe punishment death. In Gary Green's case, his mental illness
(08:44):
was introduced in court, but it wasn't persuasive enough for
the members of the jury to spare his life. They
couldn't see past the brutality of his crime. Is this
a scan that you would ever use in your testimony?
Speaker 4 (09:03):
For instance, it is in that you know this might
be somebody who is suffering from mental illness. And while
scans don't diagnose mental illness, we do see common patterns
in certain illnesses and so we can piece it together
like a puzzle. We see the same types of symptoms
in different settings and different testing, and that helps us
make our diagnosis.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Doctor SHAWNA.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Garker is a board certified psychiatrist who has evaluated hundreds
of Death Row inmates for severe mental illness, including Gary Green.
I sat down with Gary Green and we talked for
an hour, and he was articulate, and he told me
a story.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
And I think some people may watch that and say
he doesn't seem sick.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
This is the nature of mental illness. Nobody has one
hundred percent bad days and nobody has one hundred percent
good days. We all have our ups and downs. And
this is an example of somebody that can be articulate
and intelligent and thoughtful and still have a major mental
illness because it's all about, you know, how do the
symptoms present on that particular day, in that moment with
(10:02):
the other factors and triggers together, and that person can
be very different. What is schizo effective disorder, well, schizoaffective
disorder is really a melding of two diagnoses, schizophrenia and
bipolar disorder. And so when somebody has schizophrenia, they have hallucinations,
they suffer from delusions, their thoughts may be disorganized, and
(10:22):
their behaviors may be disorganized. And then if you add
on top of that the bipolar mood swings so that
people can be high, they can be depressed. When you
combine those two together, that's schizoaffective disorder.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And what did you learn from Gary, I mean, what
were those sort of symptoms or what did he explain
to you that helped you to make that diagnosis.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Well, a lot of it was about paranoia, that he
wasn't sure who to trust, That he thought people were
his children were turning against him, his family was being
turned against him, and that he became convinced that that
was really going on.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Of course, there are plenty of people with schizo effective
disorder who don't commit violent crimes. How do you sort
of explain that from your expert point of view?
Speaker 3 (11:00):
It's somewhat perfect storm the way things happen.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Sometimes, You're right, most folks with mental illness are not
out there committing crimes. But when you throw on the
illegal drugs, alcohol, stress, then they take actions which they
think are justified or self defense or they had no recourse.
But when they're not psychotic, they would never have done that.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
You know, in Gary Green's case, there's a lot of
tragedy and there's a lot of death. You know, his victims.
The step since he tried to kill and have traumatized.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
What went wrong?
Speaker 4 (11:27):
I think it's, you know, it's an indictment of our
mental health system of not being able to get care
to the people who need it. So it becomes this
cycle where the violence just continues to get perpetuated.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
We're in Dallas, not too far from where Gary Green
killed Livita and Jasmine. And one of the things that's
just so hard about these cases is that the crimes
are so horribly violent because he didn't just kill those
two family members.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
He tried to kill his two step sons. Hey, hey,
let's see one of them.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
JT has agreed to talk to us and tell us
how that experience has affected his life.
Speaker 7 (12:11):
I don't feel like I ever got the chance to
be a kid like I feel like I've always been
worried about Gary getting out, or you know, focused on
how my life would have been if my mom was here,
my sister was here.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
What challenges have you had with mental health?
Speaker 7 (12:28):
So I got diagnosed with PTSD anxiety and depression. I've
had four suicide attempts and as far as like at home,
I can go like two days without sleeping.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
When you hear Gary and other people say, you know,
he had some your mental illness. He was hearing voices
what goes through your mind.
Speaker 7 (12:47):
I think a lot of people on the outside always
trying to tell you what's going on, and I think
people try to make excuses for others as well. And
one thing we have to realize is that mental illness
does not excuse you from your actions. Like I have
mental illness, but it's up to you to have the
(13:08):
strengths to either get help or silence those voces yourself.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Did you ever see any signs of psychosis or mental illness?
Speaker 1 (13:15):
And Gary?
Speaker 7 (13:16):
Oh, I honestly don't think there's nothing wrong with Gary.
I think that in a fit of rage, he did
something that you know he shouldn't have done. I think
he knew exactly what he was doing.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Do you know that your mom pushed him to get
help before all this happened. I don't know for sure.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I mean by his telling and I don't know if
he's credible, Okay, but he said he didn't think he
had anything wrong with him, and your mom said you
got to go get checked out. They both apparently went
to this hospital and we pulled the medical records from it,
and they ended up diagnosing him and holding him, and
then he was able to leave.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
And it was shortly aftergot that everything happened. Does that
change the way you feel at all?
Speaker 4 (14:00):
A little bit?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
A little bit?
Speaker 7 (14:02):
That's basically saying, hey, we know there's something wrong with you,
but we're going to go ahead. I'll let you do
whatever you want to And that, of course I would
feel like led to the death of my mother, my sister.
Speaker 11 (14:13):
In the US today, one person out of every twenty
you must undergo treatment and a mental institution.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
In the nineteen fifties, politicians enacted a deinstitutionalization movement, which
removed people with severe mental illness from hospitals and put
them back into their community.
Speaker 12 (14:30):
Electoral shock therapy may be recommended for other disorders.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Because legislators believed that mental hospitals were inhumane, facilities closed down,
and Texas went from having one hundred and ninety beds
per one hundred thousand residents in nineteen fifty five to
fewer than eight today. Incarceration rates for these individuals went up.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
We're talking about millions of people suffering with severe mental illness.
Once we couldn't put them in hospitals anymore, have beds
for them anymore?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Where are they going to go?
Speaker 4 (14:59):
Are jails in? Prisons are the largest mental asylums we
have in our country, especially on death row.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Needing help from his wheelchair heavily guarded ended handcuffs, Andre
Thomas went from patient to prisoner this afternoon.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Andre Thomas is known as one of the most severely
mentally ill death row inmates in America.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Andre Thomas is on death row for the two thousand
and four murder of his ex wife, their four year
old son, and her thirteen month old daughter.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
In the middle of a psychotic episode, Andre broke into
his estranged wife, Laura Bourne's apartment early in the morning
and stabbed her and her two children to death. According
to court records, Thomas believed Andre Junior was the Antichrist
in the thirteen month old, a related evil spirit. Following
God's orders, he said, he cut out the children's hearts,
(15:53):
believing that would free them from demons. He was sentenced
to death in two thousand and five. Peterson Kate was
assigned as a defense lawyer behind the lead attorney.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Right before his arraignment, he was reading the Bible. He
was fixated on it, and when he got to the
chapter that said, if you're right, I offend the cast
it from yourself.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
That's what he did. Literally, he plucked his eye out.
Speaker 6 (16:17):
Since the incident in two thousand and four, Thomas has
taken out both of his eyes, eating one of them.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
And after that they determined he might not be competent,
so let's send him away. So they sent him away
to the state hospital. They treated him with massive amounts
of drugs, got him competent, and brought him back for trial.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
So wait a second.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
The state took him out of custody, put him in
a mental health facility, gave him drugs in order to
make him competent to be tried in a capital case.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yes, and let me clarify something. There is a difference
between competency to scan trial and insanity. Potency means that
you're mentally well enough to help your attorney with your defense,
you understand the charges against you, if you're able to talk,
communicate that sort of thing. The insanity is whether or
(17:17):
not you knew your actions at the time of committing
them were right or wrong.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
So it's two different standards, two different things.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
But if you don't understand why you're being executed or
what execution is you are constitutionally protected from the death
penalty in theory. Before the murders, Andrey knew something was wrong.
He checked himself into a mental hospital, which applied for
an emergency detention order. It should have kept him there
for seventy two hours. Instead he walked out in less
(17:49):
than a day.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
We basically wanted to convince a jury and get them
to see how sick he was. That was a goal,
was for them to understand that, for lack of a
better term, a normal human being does not commit these
sort of atrocities, does not pluck out their own eye,
and then does not sit there casually and just look
(18:12):
at you and can't carry on a conversation.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Why do you think the jury didn't buy that he
was not guilty by reason of insanity?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
In talking to the jury, they didn't care about mental illness.
All they cared about was making sure that someone who
had so brutally murdered three people did not walk in
sunshine again. All it took them was looking at the
video and crime scene photographs for them to make that determination.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
So they actually saw the victims.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Oh yes, So the brutality of the crime overshadowed any
of those mitigating factors like severe mental illness.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Absolutely, what was Andre doing during the trial. He loves sugar,
so we fed him skittles and he would eat skittles
all day long. The only time he showed any emotion,
any question about what was going on was when the
judge sentenced him to death, and he wasn't reacting to that.
(19:18):
I was standing next to him, bawling my eyes out,
and he was patting me on the shoulder, telling me
that it would be okay, that everything was okay, I
would be okay. So he wasn't even reacting. He didn't
(19:42):
understand what was happening. He was reacting to my emotions
standing next to him.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
He had no idea that he had just been sentenced
to death.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
None.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Sorry, What makes you emotional about recalling that moment?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Well, having someone's life in your hands and failing, it's
very difficult.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
And that's what I lived with.
Speaker 11 (20:25):
That apartment there is the one we used to live in.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Bryant Hughes was Laura's boyfriend at the time of her death.
They lived together here in this complex and shared a daughter, Leah,
the thirteen month old murdered by Andre.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Do the memories of that day come back to. Yeah, yeah,
it does.
Speaker 11 (20:44):
The thing that pops out to me here is remembering
all the teddy bears and the stuffed animals that was
laid outside the apartment.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
What was Laura like?
Speaker 11 (20:57):
A happy, wonderful person to be around, full of passion, empathy,
a sweetheart.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Your little girl Leo was only thirteen months old. What
do you remember about her?
Speaker 11 (21:13):
She was a daddy's girl. She never wanted me to
put her down. A little Andre too, His smile could
brighten the room. I loved him dearly.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Did you ever see any violent tendencies or any erratic
behavior from Andrea?
Speaker 9 (21:30):
Never?
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Personally.
Speaker 11 (21:31):
I never even heard him raise his voice.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Did Laura ever mention to you that she was scared
of him or nervous?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
No? No. The night before the crime, Andre went over
to Laura and Brian's apartment for a few hours to
visit his son.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
How did he seem that night?
Speaker 11 (21:48):
Some people might call him weird or not mainstream acting
or whatever, you know, but.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
He it's troubled. Can you give an example, like.
Speaker 11 (22:04):
He had something on his mind. I could tell you
wanted something off his chest. We didn't know how to
go about it.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
How has this affected your life since then.
Speaker 8 (22:14):
Bad.
Speaker 11 (22:16):
Let's just sum it up in one world word bad.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Have you been able to find happiness?
Speaker 11 (22:21):
Well, I'll laugh and smile and joke and happiness. I'll
probably plan happiness when I'm dead.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Andre Thomas is forty years old and has a date
to be executed this year at the same Texas death
chamber as Gary Green. From a medical perspective, is there
any difference really between Gary Green and Andre Thomas?
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Not from a psychiator standpoint, No, in terms of their
mental illness, The diagnoses, the way it can affect somebody
can be different. But I think it's just a matter
of degree. I mean, it just depends on the severity
of the symptoms and when they strike a person. And additionally, again,
people can be outwardly psychotic. They can do things like
(23:05):
mister Thomas did that's really extreme. But you can also
be quiet about it and not talk to people about
it because you're paranoid and so you hold that stuff in,
don't tell people what you're experiencing.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Do you think they should be judged differently by a
jury or by those considering whether they should be eligible
for a death sentence.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
No, I don't think so, because I know how it
affects people deeply and how it disorders their mind. And
that's important that the jury be able to be educated
on those things, because they have in their minds what
they think Siberimnimalis is, and that can be very different
from how it presents in the real world.
Speaker 5 (23:45):
They may argument in the Gargering case, where the facts
of the crime they were so heinous, so much blood,
so much evil in the state's mind, and then just
seeing that little girl floating in the bathtub, I just
think that you just can't get over that.
Speaker 13 (24:06):
I to sing, America, we are darker people. They sent
us to eat in the kitchen when company come. But
we laugh and eat will and grows drawn. Tomorrow we'll
be at the table when company come. Nobody there says.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
To us, eat in the kitchen.
Speaker 13 (24:30):
Besides, you'll see how beautiful we are and be ashamed
we too are America.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
It's been thirteen years since Gary Green was sentenced to death.
To this day, Kobe Warren, one of his defense lawyers,
and Josh Healey, the prosecutor, still disagree on whether Gary's
mental illness should have been considered at sentencing.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
What were the mitigating factors that you were focused on.
Speaker 14 (24:56):
I mean there were some mental health issues, kind of
rough bringing, poverty, not a super stable home.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Josh, do you believe that he had severe mental illness.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
I believe he had mentaloniness. I don't believe he had
severe mental illness too. Warrn't sparing his life?
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I think one of the hardest questions in this conversation
is what is that threshold. It's not like Gary showed
up to court and said, like, by the way, I
have mental illness.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Family history.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Nisan o'carter, his's brother testified that he remembers his brother
acting very strangely, hearing voices, hearing demons. And then you
hear from the physicians psychiatrists who say he has schizo
effective disorder of bipolar type, he has hallucinations, he hears
voices that tell him to do things.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Why wasn't that enough for you?
Speaker 5 (25:38):
Because during cross examination of their doctors and during cross
examination of their witnesses, we were able to show that
he had some mental illness, but it didn't rise to
the level as you are describing.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
The Gary Green first Andre Thomas, they had similar diagnoses.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Do you have to pull your eyeballs out in order
to get executed.
Speaker 5 (25:58):
Let me respond to you like this, if you took
both their diagnoses and actions and got a one hundred
random people and said who's more mentally messed up?
Speaker 3 (26:06):
But it's subjective. I think that's what's interesting is all
of this is subjectives.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
We're just hearing dramatic details about how about self harm,
about what people are doing, about erratic behavior, but none
of it feels scientific to me.
Speaker 14 (26:20):
I would say, there absolutely has to be some sort
of chimicalin balance to actually literally and physically pull out
your own eyeball and eat it. It is subjective, but
it's more subjective for the jurors, like they're the ones
that has to make that determination, Like they can put
more credence in what a particular expert says on the
defense side or the state side, it's up to them,
because honestly, what it is, it's mercy is if someone
(26:44):
has enough grace and mercy in their heart to say, yeah,
this is awful, it's this terrible and this person he
did these things. But does it warn't that he die?
Speaker 3 (26:53):
With Carrie Green's case, do you have any regrets whatsoever?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
The jury an extraordinary amount of power when it comes
to sentencing defendants to death, and the jury is a
reflection of the public. More than half the country still
wants capital sentences carried out. Seventy seven percent of Republicans
and forty six percent of Democrats favor the death penalty,
and that's especially true in Texas, a state that's killed
(27:20):
more than four times the amount of people over the
last fifty years than any other state. We're in Huntsville, Texas,
at the Texas Prison Museum to meet former warden Jim Willett.
He oversaw eighty nine executions here and I want to
talk to him about how ingrained the death penalty is
in the culture.
Speaker 12 (27:41):
Those three pistols in there are not real. They're carved
out of wood and painted, so they were made by
inmates and they were going to use them to attempt
an escape. I find that very interesting.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
So what is this that we're looking at.
Speaker 12 (27:55):
This is a model of the Huntsville prison. The Walls
unit is the oldest and in Texas. It took in
its first inmate in eighteen forty nine, and it is
where all of the executions that the state of Texas
has ever done have taken place. Prior to that, it
was up to each county. This is the Texas Electric
(28:16):
Chair Old Sparky. It was first used in nineteen twenty
four and used up through nineteen sixty four, and three
hundred and sixty four men died in that chair.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
What role has the death penalty played in the state
of Texas.
Speaker 12 (28:32):
Just basically, it's the most severe form of punishment that's here.
I think that the people of Texas have kind of
had the attitude that there are certain crimes that if
you commit, we're going to consider in your life. And
I think it's just also our character from the time
we ever became a state. Vast majority of the people
(28:53):
in Texas are Christians, and I think Christians typically support
the death penalty.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
I believe in the death penalty, and he killed them
three people. I believe in the Texas law.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
It is what it is. Brian Hughes's daughter Brittany was
supposed to be at the apartment the morning Andre Thomas
killed her little sister, but ended up staying with her mother,
Jennifer instead. They both still struggle with post traumatic stress.
Speaker 15 (29:29):
Honestly, after that day, I don't remember a lot of
anything because I was so traumatized anything. Everything at that
point especially most of my life after that is a
complete blur. And I never understood that how somebody go
from just being so cool and trying every kid like
(29:50):
is basically his and just is snapped one day.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
I mean when you when you hear that he had
severe mental illness, that he was suffering from schizo effective disorder,
I mean, what goes through your mind?
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Now you want to know my personal opinion.
Speaker 6 (30:05):
I think it's bullshit, and I think that it's a
case of oh, I can't have you, won't.
Speaker 12 (30:10):
Nobody have you?
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Can?
Speaker 6 (30:12):
I tell my opinion.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Also, that's my personal opinion.
Speaker 6 (30:16):
I suffer from mental health as well. I think that
he had a lot of mental stuff going on and
he didn't know how to handle it.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
So you believe that that he has severe mental illness,
I do. Do you think his mental illness should be
a reason that he is not executed?
Speaker 6 (30:36):
I'm mixed about it.
Speaker 15 (30:37):
I am.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
I think that minis schizophrenic as hell. But at the
same time, he murdered kids and that's not okay. I
don't want no hate or anything things, but I prefer
that he would not be here anymore.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
And Jennifer, when you see Andre's name in the newspaper
still to this day, and everyone's too big, everyone's to
what should happen with him? Should he be executed?
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Should he not? I mean, what's your opinion.
Speaker 15 (31:05):
I don't think he is mentally ill at the time,
whenever he walked in, kicked in that door to that
apartment and killed those three people, he was not mentally ill.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Did tell me how that is possible?
Speaker 10 (31:19):
It's not, it's not.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
I don't care.
Speaker 6 (31:21):
I'm not right in the head and I haven't been,
maybe ever since this. Maybe that's when it started.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
I don't know it did.
Speaker 6 (31:29):
I have history of cutting myself and burning myself. So
why did you go to some mental hospital? It's because
my family once went to other than that.
Speaker 8 (31:35):
I don't go.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
She has she's my god prednant. I'm so sorry. She
is a cutter, she is a burner. She's done it
for about twelve years.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Now.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Do you feel that all of these symptoms, the severe
mental illness that you have now, do you think it's
because of what Andre did?
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Yeah? I was a fine I was fine. I was
a cool child.
Speaker 6 (32:01):
I chilled, I didn't really have any worries, and then
after this happened, I completely changed, Like I'm just like stuck.
Speaker 8 (32:24):
Prist.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Chair Rose moves that house for forty seventy five woldout
beer for favorite full house.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
The reputation to be passing your credent clerical, please call
the role Charefrank, Vice Chair Rose.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Representative Tony Rose is sponsoring a bill that would allow
criminal defense teams to introduce mitigating factors at the start
of the trial process instead about the sentencing phase.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
HB seven seven by Rose with the applicability of the
death penalty to a capital fence committed by the person
with severe mental illness.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
The Chair recognized Miss Rose to explain the bill.
Speaker 16 (32:57):
Thank you, missus, speaker. I want to just see you
a little bit about why I'm so passionate about this.
What is HB sevent seven Houseville seven twenty seven is
a bill that exempts person would severely mental illness from
the death penalty. It's just exempts them. It doesn't freedom
of their crime. It's a process that's done on a
(33:20):
case by case basis, and it has to be done upfront,
which is different from when a person is sentenced to
death day all of the examinations are done on the
back end.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Does that land with your Republican colleague.
Speaker 16 (33:33):
No one of them mentioned that they were pro life
of innocent light. But because a lot of people here
are not here to govern, they're not afraid to just
you know, not support good policy because they want to
make sure they make the right conservative marks on a
school cards.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Why is this still so important to you.
Speaker 16 (33:54):
I spend majority of my professional career in correctional mental health.
I saw herations or individual would commit a crime and
they were psychotic at the time, and then once they're treated,
to just see a totally different person, the person which
you should get life in prison without the possibility of parole,
instead of executing a person because of an illness that
(34:16):
they were born with.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
And when folks say, oh, it's a slippery slope, everyone's
claiming that they have, you know, severe mental illness, and
this is just going to let people get off.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
What do you say to that. I say to that
that they need to be educated on mental illness. Are
you familiar with Gary Green's case?
Speaker 7 (34:32):
I am.
Speaker 16 (34:33):
I'm unfamiliar with this case. I actually was employed at
the Dallas County Jail at the time he committed his crime.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
The young lady that he murdered was my sorority sister.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Knowing somebody who was the victim of one of these
brutal crimes by someone who had severe mental illness. I mean,
is it hard to have that personal connection and still
advocate for this bill.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 16 (35:01):
I see of how the lack of access the mental
health services has devastated my community. I feel like these
people may be dangerous, but they're just people that need
to be treated the appropriate way.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
What are your thoughts on a bill like HB seventy seven.
Speaker 7 (35:24):
I don't think it's a bad idea, but I think
it requires major stipulations on what y'all are doing to
diagnose these people people like Gary, I would need to
see some type of testing, you know, something that for
sure lets me know that this person has a mental
illness that is seriously affecting them and they're not just using,
(35:45):
you know, just as a crutch.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
The thing that's tricky is that he had a diagnosis
from a doctor that was schizophactive disorder of bipolar type.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
So I mean this law could have exempted him, right,
how do you feel about that? It's really complicated.
Speaker 7 (36:01):
I honestly, if it would have exempted him, I probably
would It probably would have been a lot worse. Ain't
no telling what my mom how she was reacting when
she was getting stabbed by you, you know, telling how
my sister was reacting when you were holding her head underwater.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
I just don't feel like that's fair. In theory, you're
open to this idea, but when you're the victim and
you think about this person, it's like it's harder. It's
a harder question.
Speaker 7 (36:30):
Once again, no matter how oh we are, no matter
what we're diagnosed with, I feel like we're all responsible
for our actions. And unless you have some type of
mental illness that makes it to where you just can't
take care of yourself and you're not competent enough to
you know, doing things by yourself, don't see any reason
why you should be excused or for taking somebody's life.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
It's been nineteen years since Andre committed his crimes. Jennifer
still thinks about the children who died and how her
daughter could have been one of them.
Speaker 7 (37:26):
Those poor babies.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Lord didn't deserve that.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
No nobody deserves that. That's premeditated murder. I don't care
(37:52):
how you look at it. It's premeditated murder.
Speaker 10 (37:55):
You killed your strange.
Speaker 14 (37:56):
Wife, your son, your son that you made with your
wife and her thirteen month old baby.
Speaker 12 (38:12):
He played God the day of.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
March twenty seven, two thousand and four.
Speaker 12 (38:17):
He played God three times.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
On March seventh, people gathered from around the country to
protest and pray for Gary Green.
Speaker 10 (38:36):
If this execution goes fourth tonight, we're a Texas's five
hundred and eighty second.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
We're in Huntsville, Texas, and Gary is scheduled to be
executed in just a few hours. As the crowd waited
for word on Gary Green's execution, news broke about Andre Thomas.
Speaker 10 (39:01):
Andre Thomas was just granted a stay of execution.
Speaker 9 (39:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
In both Gary Green and Andrea Thomas's cases, they've killed
their partners and children, And so people look at this
and they say, I mean, this was just jealousy.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
That's the easy answer. But my experience is these are
much more complicated than that. What may seem obvious on
the outside maybe far from it once you actually delve
into how that person was thinking.
Speaker 10 (39:30):
You know, how anybody could think that somebody who pulled
their eyeballs out and actually ate one of them is
mentally same.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
A district judge delayed Andre's execution allowing his lawyers more
time to argue for his life. Why should people with
severe mental illness not be eligible for the death penalty?
Speaker 2 (39:56):
They don't know what's happening to them executing a body.
The mind's not there.
Speaker 10 (40:24):
The things that the execution has happened, and their groom
has been legally launched by the state of Texas.
Speaker 17 (40:41):
I pray that someone will get that cross off the
top of that building. Die Jesus, Buddha, whoever you pray to.
It doesn't have anything to do with killing our neighbors.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
What was it like for you to be there witnessing
curious execution?
Speaker 7 (41:03):
I was just kind of there, like, man, this is
too good for you. You know, my mom didn't get
to go to sleep. I just wish it would have
been more deserving of what he did.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Do you think that you'd be sitting where you were
today if you had.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Gotten help as a child.
Speaker 9 (41:22):
Well, I know it wouldn't because, uh, that was the
only era in my life that uh set the foundation
for everything that transpire into my life.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
How are you doing? How are you feeling right now?
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Uh?
Speaker 9 (41:38):
Well, a lot of mixed emotions, because that's the question
I asked myself every day and and uh self evaluation
twenty four hours a day, and uh, nobody wanted to
be killed. Nobody. You know, you call it execution, but
uh it's it's still a killing. And uh, I don't
have a problem with anybody trying to do any harm
to me.
Speaker 8 (41:57):
I I don't.
Speaker 9 (41:57):
I never been the type person that justify nothing that
I do. I didn't do. And I had the opportunity
to prepare myself on many levels. But at the end
of the day, I look at the big picture, and
the big pictures it's just a cycle of lick
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