Can we force a prisoner to be medicated in order to be competent enough to be executed?

Truly only Franz Kafka could do justice to some of the questions that arise in our justice system. In Singleton v. Norris, 319 F.3d 1018 (8th Cir. 2003), the defendant argued that he could not be executed because he was not mentally competent and that he could not be forced to take medication to make him medically competent because to do so would make him eligible for execution and therefore could by no means be in his “best medical interest.” The 8th Circuit disagreed, requiring the question whether the medication to make the defendant competent  to be answered “without regard to whether there [was] a pending date of execution.” Id. at 1026. Both the death sentence and involuntary medication regime had been lawfully imposed. The defendant thus could no longer assert either a life interest nor a liberty interest.

Now, though, the North Carolina Criminal Law Blog suggests that more recent U.S. Supreme Court precedents “may collectively stand for the notion that the execution of an inmate who is competent only by virtue of forced medication might violate the Eighth Amendment’s evolving standards of decency.”

I find the suggestion encouraging, but I am skeptical. We seem loathe to find reasons not to execute people these days.