Panetti v. Quarterman

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Panetti v. Quarterman
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 18, 2007 Decided June 28, 2007
Full case name	Scott Louis Panetti v. Nathaniel Quarterman, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Docket no.	06-6407
Citations	551 U.S. 930 (more) 127 S. Ct. 2842; 168 L. Ed. 2d 662
Case history
Prior	Denial of habeas relief affirmed by the Fifth Circuit, 448 F.3d 815 (5th Cir. 2006); cert. granted, Jan. 5, 2007
Holding
Criminal defendants sentenced to death may not be executed if they do not understand the reason for their imminent execution, and that once the state has set an execution date death-row inmates may litigate their competency to be executed in habeas corpus proceedings.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Antonin Scalia Anthony Kennedy · David Souter Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito
Case opinions
Majority	Kennedy, joined by Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer
Dissent	Thomas, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Alito
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. VIII

Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930 (2007), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, ruling that criminal defendants sentenced to death may not be executed if they do not understand the reason for their imminent execution, and that once the state has set an execution date death-row inmates may litigate their competency to be executed in habeas corpus proceedings.^[1] This decision reaffirmed the Court's prior holdings in Ford v. Wainwright,^[2] and Stewart v. Martinez-Villareal.^[3]