I have no idea why some conservatives have decided that they need to imitate liberals by standing up for criminals. Ted Cruz fortunately isn’t one of them.
Cruz refused to join the calls for clemency for Scott Panetti, who had murdered his in-laws and held his wife and daughter hostage, and instead said, “I trust the criminal justice system to operate, to protect the rights of the accused and to administer justice to violent criminals.”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me, as an elected official who does not currently have a role in the criminal justice system, to be getting involved in the adjudication of any particular case,” he said. “It’s important that the law be followed.”
That’s a radical departure from Obama in both principle and restraint. Cruz chose not to comment directly on the case beyond expressing his confidence in the Texas legal system.
Mainstream media outlets have called Scott Panetti’s trial an outrage and denounced the legal system. The trial was an outrage mainly because the murderer was allowed to put on a bizarre show of pretending to be insane in a way that the worst actor in the world would.
Editorials opposing his execution invariably highlight his bizarre courtroom behavior. Wearing a costume and speaking in gibberish is not proof of innocence. Neither is trying to subpoena unrelated famous people. It’s theater. It’s how someone pretending to be crazy would act.
Scott Panetti was found competent to stand trial repeatedly. His theatrics are just that… an act.
The murders that he carried out were conventional. His wife left him after he abused her and took the daughter. He dressed in fatigues, armed himself, killed his in-laws and abducted his wife and daughter.
Those aren’t the actions of the lunatic who is so incapable of processing reality that he doesn’t even know why he’s being executed, as his lawyers and defenders contend.
It was a conventional crime with an obvious motive.
Scott Panetti has been really good at working the system. The religious angle isn’t new. Plenty of criminals get religion in prison, but it paid off for him. Conservatives are being told to sympathize with him because he supposedly thinks he’s being executed for preaching.
But they’re not getting the whole story.
Panetti argued that he was not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutors maintained that Panetti was malingering — while they conceded to elements of mental illness, they weren’t buying his claim to legal insanity. The jury sided with the state. (An appellate judge later cited prison tape recordings of Panetti’s phone conversations with his parents in which he apparently seemed in full control of his faculties.)
“The tapes of Panetti’s conversations with his parents establish that Panetti has a fairly sophisticated understanding of his case, up to and including the legal intricacies presented by Ford and the Supreme Court’s remand opinion,” U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks wrote.
Panetti’s lawyers have argued in appeals that Panetti understands that, officially, he was sentenced to death for the murder of his in-laws, but that Panetti believes that’s a cover for the truth: that the state is merely a pawn of Satan, who wants Panetti killed so he can no longer preach the gospel.
Translation, the story about Panetti not knowing why he’s being executed has fallen apart. Panetti’s defenders still clinging to this to prove his mental illness can let go of it now.
Faking insanity is common for death row inmates. Either that or retardation. The reason is obvious. And yet 90 percent of the coverage simply repeats stories about wacky courtroom behavior as if they were evidence of anything except bad acting.
Jurors pay attention to expert testimony which is why he was on death row. The media just repeats stories about a guy dressing up in costume and acts outraged that he could even be tried when he’s “clearly” insane based on his wacky costume.




















