A Texas inmate who removed both of his eyes is set to be executed in less than two months.
Andre Thomas' attorney Maurie Levin said Thomas is one of the most mentally ill prisoners in Texas history.
"His illness is extreme, it's lifelong, it continues today," Levin said. "He is schizophrenic and suffers from auditory and visual hallucinations."
Thomas is scheduled to be executed on April 5. A petition asks for clemency to re-sentence him to life in prison or grant a reprieve to determine if Thomas is competent to be executed.
Levin said Thomas began to hear voices in his head when he was 10 years old and started drinking in an attempt to cope with them, as he had seen older family members do. He attempted suicide for the first time when he was 10, and would make many more attempts.
She said Thomas reached out for help two days before the murders, going to an emergency room because he could not stand the voices in his head. While he was found to be psychotic, he was left alone and wandered away. An Emergency Detention Order was issued, but it was not carried out.
There's no question Thomas stabbed his estranged wife Laura Boren, their 4-year-old son Andre Jr. and her 1-year-old daughter Leyha Hughes
in Sherman in 2004. Levin said Thomas did it because God told him to and "because he believed his wife was Jezebel and his son Satan and the other child the evil spirit."
He said he believed removing their hearts was going to save them from evil. After the murders, he stabbed himself in the chest.
Thomas gouged out his right eye five days after the murders while in the Greyson County Jail. He said he was following the literal dictates of Christ’s injunction in Matthew 5:29 which says, "If the right eye offends thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee."
Levin said a couple of years later on death row, Thomas removed his second eye and ate it "to try, in his mind, to keep the government from hearing his thoughts."
Since then Thomas has been housed in a prison unit reserved for the most mentally ill Texas inmates for the last 15 years. He is being given antipsychotic drugs, which Levin said manage only to mitigate his auditory and visual hallucinations.
There is widespread support for clemency. Seventy-seven Texas mental health professionals and advocates for people with mental illness wrote to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole as have over 100 Texas faith leaders.
"In Andre Thomas’s case, we are firmly convinced that granting him clemency is the path of morality, faith, and justice," they wrote. "We urge you to do so and ensure that he is not executed."
There is also legislation that would prevent such an execution from happening again. The House of Representatives is considering a bill that would ensure that capital defendants with certain severe mental illnesses are sentenced to life without parole, rather than death. In 2021, the House passed similar legislation with strong bipartisan support. However, it is not retroactive.
"We're looking at the scenario that while that bill has gotten considerable support in the House, they're looking to execute Andre," Levin said. "It's a grotesque scenario. This blind, severely mentally ill man being led to the gurney. I have to believe Governor Abbott does not want to see that spectacle."
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