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Psychiatrists to assess Wuornos' mental state
©Associated Press
September 27, 2002
TALLAHASSEE -- Psychiatrists will examine serial killer Aileen Wuornos to make sure she is mentally competent to be executed next month, Gov. Jeb Bush said Thursday.
Wuornos is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Oct. 9. She has said she wants to be executed.
A judge this year found her competent to be executed, and in April she won permission from the state Supreme Court to fire her state lawyers and drop her appeals.
However, a private lawyer appointed later to represent Wuornos in a lawsuit alleging abuse by prison guards wrote the high court last week to share his doubts about her mental condition.
"We're going to ask three psychiatrists to analyze her and make sure she's fit for the execution, which is a duty that I have," Bush told reporters in Miami Beach.
Wuornos, 44, is one of three women on Florida's death row. She was convicted of fatally shooting six middle-aged men along north and central Florida highways in 1989 and 1990.
Fort Lauderdale attorney Raag Singhal was pleased to hear that she would be examined.
In the lawsuit he is handling for Wuornos, she accuses prison guards of trying to harass her "to death" and drive her to suicide. In a 25-page handwritten filing, she accused the prison staff of tainting her food, spitting on it and serving her potatoes cooked in dirt.
"Based upon the totality of my contacts with Ms. Wuornos, I have grave doubts about her mental condition and specifically whether she is competent to be executed," Singhal wrote the Supreme Court on Sept. 17. He said Wuornos has refused contact with him.
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