Case raises issue of medicating mentally ill to make them fit for execution.   In a front page article, the Wall Street Journal (12/14, A1, Fields) reports that as the Supreme Court has ruled that mentally retarded defendants cannot be sentenced to death, death row inmate Gregory Thompson "is asking the courts to decide whether mentally ill prisoners can be executed if rendered competent only by medication." A number of "medical and legal groups argue that it puts doctors in an ethical bind: having to treat people in order for them to be killed." The Supreme Court never addressed that question "in a capital-case ruling," although in the 1990s case of Michael Perry, it sent "the case back to the Louisiana Supreme Court. The state's high court decided it wouldn't force Mr. Perry to take medication, due in part to the ethical dilemma such a move would present to doctors." The American Medical Association also "has tried to weave a path through this thorny problem. It says physicians shouldn't treat an inmate to restore competence except if medical intervention is needed to mitigate suffering, which could also hasten an execution," but it "acknowledges 'it will not always be easy' to decide whether or not to medicate and leaves the ultimate decision to the treating physicians."

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