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Execution stayed in Texas death row case

AUSTIN, Fla., May 15 (UPI) -- The planned execution of a mentally ill man in Texas has been stayed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

The execution, set for Wednesday, was delayed Monday by the Court after lawyers for Steven Staley, on Death Row since 1991 for killing a Fort Worth restaurant manager during a robbery, argued the State was violating Staley's constitutional rights by forcing him to take anti-psychotic drugs so he could be considered mentally competent for execution, the Texas Tribune reported Tuesday.

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Tarrant County prosecutors said Staley's treatment is in his best interests.

"We believe that it is completely reasonable for the trial court to simply say, 'Take your medication,'" Assistant District Attorney Jim Gibson said.

"It is obvious that the whole purpose of medicating him was to get him competent to be executed," Staley lawyer John Stickels said. "I don't think that's right."

The American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association consider it unethical to provide treatment to patients when the sole purpose is execution, and courts in Louisiana and South Carolina have ruled forcibly medicating patients so they can be executed is a violation of those states' constitutions, the newspaper noted.

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