Another crazy person of the year

Many have lampooned Time Magazine‘s seemingly crazy choice for person of the year.  Today, in this commentary, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen suggests a different person of the year:

My person of the year is Gregory Thompson.  I choose him to call attention to the madness of the death penalty…. He is a cold-blooded killer, plain and simple.  He is also out of his mind.

Thompson, 45, is delusional.  He is also paranoid, schizophrenic and depressed. For these ailments, he receives daily doses of drugs and, twice a month, anti-psychotic injections. The state of Tennessee wants very much to put him to death for the horrendous 1985 murder of Brenda Blanton Lane, of which there is no doubt about his guilt.  There is grave doubt, though, about the constitutionality, not to mention the decency, of executing an insane man. Thus the 12 pills Thompson takes every day.  The idea, according to a recent account of his case in the Wall Street Journal, is to make him sane enough to be put to death….

[Thompson] was probably insane when he murdered Brenda Blanton Lane but will be deemed sane if and when he’s executed.  He’s my person of the year — a fleetingly sane man in the maw of a thoroughly insane system.