On Monday, ThinkProgress reported on Abdul Awkal, a severely mentally ill man scheduled to be executed in Ohio next week. We were just informed by Awkal’s attorney David Singleton that Gov. John Kasich denied a petition asking him to commute, or at least delay, Awkal’s death sentence.

Awkal, who was diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder, believes that he advises the CIA on “Islamic religion and culture,” and he’s spent more than a decade writing letters to former CIA directors and to President Obama offering advice on the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although he was sentenced to die for a double murder, Awkal says that he is going to be killed because the “CIA wanted him dead.”. He has a long history of hallucinations and mental breakdowns and was once ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial.

Singleton tells ThinkProgress that he will ask Kasich to reconsider his decision, and that Awkal’s legal team will also seek relief in state and, if necessary, federal court. Awkal could have a strong case. The Supreme Court held in Panetti v. Quarterman that it is unconstitutional to execute a person who is unable to “‘comprehen[d] the reasons’” for his punishment” or who is “unaware of … why [he is] to suffer it.” If Awkal truly believes that he is being executed because the CIA wants him dead, rather than because he committed a serious crime, than he is constitutionally beyond the reach of Ohio’s death chamber.

Ultimately, however, the fact that Awkal’s attorneys need to prove exactly how insane he is in order to save his life highlights the absurdity of America’s rules for state-sponsored killings. The Supreme Court has already recognized that the Constitution forbids executions of juvenile offenders or the mentally retarded because diminished mental capacity makes it harder for an offender “to understand and process information, to learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, or to control impulses—that also make it less likely that they can process the information of the possibility of execution as a penalty and, as a result, control their conduct based upon that information.” The same logic also applies to a severely mentally ill man such as Abdul Awkal.

On June 6, Ohio is scheduled to execute Abdul Awkal for the murder of his estranged wife and brother-in-law unless Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) grants a pending clemency petition, or a court steps in with a last minute order. Here are the facts about the mental health of the man set to be executed next Wednesday:

• Survived a Civil War: In 1975, when Abdul was sixteen years old, a civil war erupted in his home country of Lebanon. Abdul lived through this war for eight years before he was able to escape to Michigan to live with family members. Although Abdul never sought treatment during his first months in the United States and thus was not diagnosed with a mental illness until sometime later, he said that he spent his first four months in America sitting on his brother’s couch — behavior an Ohio clemency board said was “as if he was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”
• History of Mental Breakdowns: Abdul eventually found work as a gas station attendant. About a year after he arrived in the United States, however, he was wrongfully accused of stealing from his employer. According to the Ohio Supreme Court, he then suffered a mental breakdown. Abdul “became hysterical, cursing and breaking things, vomited and then collapsed.” He was taken to a Detroit hospital in a straitjacket and later released with instructions (that he disregarded) to seek psychiatric treatment. Some time later, Abdul suffered at least one more mental breakdown as his marriage to the woman he eventually killed became increasingly dysfunctional. A mental hospital again told him to seek psychiatric care, but he did not follow up because he says he could not afford treatment.

Read more

While Republican members of Congress are opposing a popular, bipartisan bill reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, the Ohio GOP is doing his part to make sure that victims of domestic violence get fewer benefits from the bill in their state.

Using Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) budget blueprint, Ohio Republicans added language that takes away all federal funding to “abortion providers,” including Planned Parenthood. But Planned Parenthood does more than provide abortions (that’s only 3 percent of their work). The amended Ohio budget would strip away much of Planned Parenthood’s ability to fight domestic violence, and deny them funds for cancer and HIV/AIDS prevention as well:

In addition to restricting the flow of federal “family planning” funds, House Bill 487, sponsored by Representative Ron Amstutz and adopted without a recorded vote by members of the House Finance and Appropriations Committee, completely prohibits the distribution to Planned Parenthood of Ohio or any of its affiliates from any of the following federal programs:

• Violence Against Women Act
• Breast and Cervical Cancer Mortality Prevention Act
• Infertility Prevention Project (US Dept of Health & Human Services)
• Minority HIV/AIDS initiative funds (Centers for Disease Control)

In 2010 (the latest year available), 105 victims of domestic violence were killed in Ohio. There were a total of 40,283 arrests of people who physically harmed their partner or family members. The Violence Against Women Act works to prevent incidents of rape and sexual assaults, and ensures that people who are victims of domestic violence get the health care and legal protection they need in the wake of a domestic violence incident. It’s wrong, and harmful, for lawmakers to drag domestic violence victims into their political vendetta against Planned Parenthood.

Last year, Gov. John Kasich and other Ohio Republicans enacted a sweeping “elections reform” law to allowing poll workers to refuse to tell voters where they can vote, shortens the state’s early voting period, ban in-person early voting on Sundays, and prohibit boards of election from mailing absentee ballot requests to voters. Ohio voters responded by successfully collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures and forcing a repeal referendum. Though the law would otherwise have gone into effect for this year’s presidential election, the successful petition drive put the reforms on hold for this year –and it will die unless voters back in in the November elections.

Perhaps chastened by last year’s overwhelming voter rejection of Kasich’s signature anti-labor law, it appears the Ohio GOP is already sensing defeat. Last month, the state’s Republican secretary of state proposed repealing the anti-voter law and yesterday, the state senate’s Republican leadership set in motion a plan to do just that, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.

But some Republicans, including Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, are talking about not just repealing the bill but also passing a replacement bill with new “reforms.” By doing this, they could enact a new bill with similar anti-voter restrictions that would go into effect for the 2012 elections unless its opponents waged another time-consuming and expensive petition drive. Ohio has historically been a must-win swing state for Republican presidential hopefuls and suppressing voter turnout could aid the GOP nominee.

Despite the cost and extra work, Ohio progressives have vowed that they would again petition to repeal any replacement legislation and President Obama’s re-election campaign has pledged to back the signature-collection efforts, if necessary.

The gambit is not a sure thing, as Ohio House Speaker William G. Batchelder (R) says the repeal effort is likely unconstitutional. “As I have previously made clear, there is no precedent for repeal of legislation that has not taken effect due to potential voter referendum.”

Earlier this year, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) signed a radical elections law that shortens the state’s early voting period, bans in-person early voting on Sundays, and prohibits boards of election from mailing absentee ballot requests to voters. If this law had been in effect in 2008, over 200,000 voters in Columbus, Ohio alone would not have been able to cast their ballot in the way that they did.

Kasich’s plan to make it harder to vote is now facing a surprising dissenter, however, his fellow Republican and Ohio’s secretary of state:

Ohio’s top election official says state lawmakers should repeal and replace a controversial new elections law rather than allowing voters to weigh in on it in November.

Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted told a gathering of election officials Wednesday that he believes Ohio should start over on the process after the 2012 presidential election. He made the call despite the legislation containing many of his own ideas.

The new election law shortened Ohio’s early voting period, among other changes to the state’s election procedures.

If the state legislature doesn’t follow Husted’s advice, it is fairly likely that the people of Ohio will. Kasich’s anti-voter law is currently suspended after hundreds of thousands of Ohio voters signed petitions seeking to have the law overturned by referendum. The law will go before the voters this November, where it could face the same fate as Kasich’s anti-union law that was defeated in a similar referendum last year.