A mentally ill Arkansas man whose lawyers had argued...

A mentally ill Arkansas man whose lawyers had argued the state couldn't legally execute him was put to death. Charles Singleton, a convicted murderer with a history of severe mental illness who had been on Arkansas' death row longer than any other inmate, died by lethal injection for killing a woman during a 1979 robbery. Singleton, 44, was pronounced dead at 8:06 p.m. at at the Cummins unit of the Arkansas State Penitentiary in Varner. Prison doctors diagnosed Singleton, who was sentenced to death in 1979, with paranoid schizophrenia, and his condition has worsened over the years, Singleton's attorney, Jeffrey Rosenzweig said. Singleton's case had attracted the attention of mental health organizations and death penalty opponents, who point to a 1986 Supreme Court decision barring executing the insane. A 1990 Supreme Court decision allows the forced medication of inmates in certain cases. In February 2003, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that states may forcibly administer anti-psychotic medication to control a prisoner's behavior, even if doing so renders the prisoner eligible for execution. Singleton was 19 when he stabbed Mary Lou York to death while robbing a small grocery store in Hamburg. Singleton becomes the 1st condemned prisoner to be put to death this year in Arkansas, and the 1st this year in the USA.