Andre Thomas

Andre Lee Thomas (born March 17, 1983) is an American convicted mass murderer and death row inmate known for removing both of his eyeballs in separate incidents and ingesting one of them. In 2004, Thomas murdered his estranged wife Laura Boren, his four-year-old son and her one-year-old daughter in Sherman, Texas. He cut open the chests of all three victims, removed part of his wife's lung, thinking it was her heart, and removed both children's hearts.

Thomas, whose mental health problems began with auditory hallucinations at about age ten, was in the ninth grade when Boren became pregnant with his child. They married when Thomas was 18, but they separated soon thereafter. In the weeks leading up to the murders, Thomas had suicidal thoughts, drank heavily, and used cold medication as a recreational drug. In jail, a few days after his arrest, Thomas pulled one of his eyes out of its socket. A jury rejected his insanity defense and sentenced him to death on a capital murder conviction. In 2008, he removed his other eye and ingested it.

Thomas was diagnosed with schizophrenia after his arrest, and his case has raised ethical questions about executing the mentally ill. His trial verdict was upheld by a state criminal appeals court in 2008 and by a federal appeals court in 2021. While he is still under a death sentence, Thomas is housed in a Texas prison facility for inmates with psychiatric problems. Thomas was scheduled to be executed on April 5, 2023. On March 7, 2023, a judge delayed the execution date.

Early life Thomas was born on March 17, 1983, in Muskogee County, Oklahoma, to Rochelle and Danny Thomas. He was in the gifted and talented program at his school. for several years, she became pregnant and gave birth in August 1999 to a baby they named Andre Jr., after which Thomas dropped out of school in ninth grade, earned a high school equivalency diploma, and worked several jobs so that he could support Boren and the baby. He married Boren on his 18th birthday in 2001; she was 17. He thought that the meaning of life was contained in a message within the images on a U.S. dollar bill, and he said he was experiencing déjà vu. He sometimes covered his mouth with duct tape and refused to speak to his family. On March 5, a friend escorted him to a mental health clinic, where Thomas told the staff that he would step in front of a bus if he could not speak to someone. Clinic staff told him he should go to the emergency room, and they had a judge prepare an emergency detention order. Thomas did not report to the emergency room that day.

Murders On March 27, 2004, two days after going to the emergency room, Thomas went to Boren's third-floor apartment and kicked the door open. Boren's boyfriend was at work, but Boren was home with her two children. Thomas fatally stabbed her, cut open her chest and pulled out a portion of her lung, thinking he was actually removing her heart. He went to the bedroom shared by their four-year-old son and Boren's 13-month-old daughter, fatally stabbed both children and cut their hearts out of their chests.

Thomas turned himself in at the Sherman Police Department, telling officers there that he thought God wanted him to kill the victims.

Arrest and trial Five days after the murders, while Thomas was in jail awaiting trial, he removed his right eye with his bare hands. According to one source, he had been reading the Bible when he came to Matthew 5:29, which said, "If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out." Another source said that after pulling the eye out, he quoted Mark 9:47: "And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell."

Psychologists interviewed Thomas to determine his competence to stand trial, and they diagnosed Thomas with schizophrenia. Declared incompetent to stand trial, he was sent to North Texas State Hospital in mid-June 2004. After Thomas spent 47 days in the hospital, psychiatrist Joseph Black wrote to the court that Thomas had drug-induced psychosis, saying that he was competent and that he might attempt to exaggerate his mental illness by engaging in self-harm or other aberrant behavior. Defense attorney R. J. Hagood, who was ill with pancreatitis during the trial, later said he regretted not objecting to the introduction of Black's statement.

Sanity remained a central issue during the proceedings. Thomas's behavior in the courtroom has been described as "almost catatonic at times", and he snacked on Skittles candy during graphic testimony. Thomas's attorneys put forward an insanity defense. The state said that Thomas's mental illness was caused by or worsened by drug use, and they cited Texas law that invalidates an insanity defense if the mental condition was the result of voluntary intoxication. While the defense said that Thomas's removal of his own eye showed that he was insane, prosecutors said that the eye incident was indicative of an impulsive act rather than insanity.

In October 2008, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld Thomas's conviction. In a concurring opinion, Judge Cathy Cochran wrote,

Although reasonable people might well differ on the questions of whether this applicant was sane at the time he committed these murders or competent at the time he was tried, those issues were appropriately addressed by the defense, the prosecution, trial judge, and the jury during the trial ... This is a sad case. Applicant is clearly "crazy", but he is also "sane" under Texas law. Thomas said he ingested his eye to prevent the United States federal government from reading his thoughts.

In early 2020, Thomas's case was brought before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Attorney Catherine Carroll said that Thomas's original legal representation was ineffective, as his trial attorneys failed to object to the selection of the three jurors with a bias against interracial marriages. She also said that trial counsel did not present an accurate account of Thomas's longstanding psychiatric problems, did not request a competency hearing, and presented a psychiatrist as an expert witness that did not have expertise in cases where mental illness was allegedly drug-induced. In response to the appeal, prosecutors said that while there was evidence to support Thomas's mental illness, he was not insane. In April 2021, the Fifth Circuit upheld the trial court's verdict.

On October 11, 2022, Thomas's petition for a writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit was denied by the Supreme Court. Justice Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, upholding Thomas's claim that his counsel "fell far below an objective standard of reasonableness" (violating his right to effective counsel), and that "seating jurors opposed to interracial marriage violated his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights" (also violating his right to a trial by an impartial jury). The dissenting opinion states that Thomas's counsel failed to properly use their peremptory strikes against multiple jurors who clearly displayed racial animus and openly stated offense towards interracial marriage.

Legislative and ethical discussions Thomas's case has raised questions about the laws governing insanity defenses, especially on the concept of distinguishing right from wrong. The wording of Texas law was more favorable to such defenses until 1982, when there was public outcry following the acquittal of John Hinckley Jr. after his assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. Texas Representative Senfronia Thompson introduced House Bill 1150, which would have included the wording change from "know" to "appreciate" and would have required that jurors be informed of the possible consequences of acquittal for defendants like Thomas who pursue an insanity defense. The bill was left pending in a subcommittee in 2009.

In a 2015 publication, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights highlighted the ethical questions in the cases of Thomas and fellow Texas death row inmate Scott Panetti, saying that "through no fault of their own, they are tormented souls suffering from devastating afflictions that leave them unable to think and reason like people who are not so afflicted ... That is greater punishment than any court can impose."

Scheduled execution On November 11, 2022, Thomas was scheduled for execution for April 5, 2023. On March 7, 2023, state district judge Jim Fallon delayed the execution date, giving Thomas' lawyers until July 5 to prepare a request for a competency hearing.