"You're from Texas? Do you guys really execute prisoners for fun?" As a first-year from an incredibly unrepresented state on campus, I was shocked to hear these words actually come out of someone's mouth during orientation. Forced to defend myself on such an important issue, I didn't know how to respond. I knew I was far from home, but somehow this teasing question came as a reality check for me. What had I gotten myself into by coming to a school so unlike my native Lone Star State, and how was I supposed to deal with such opposition?Gradually, it became easy to shrug off the silly stereotypes and stop caring when anyone commented on how cute it was when I said "y'all" or complained of a dip in the temperature (I'm freezing my ass off now!). But, the one thing I can't seem to shake off or feel like I'm properly capable of defending is my state's attitude towards the death penalty.

I'm not claiming I'm completely opposed to the practice, but just the sheer number of those executed in Texas baffles me. Last year, Texas led the nation in executions with 33, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. That's almost double the 17 lethal injections administered in 2001. Even worse, 298 inmates have been executed in Texas in the past 20 years -- far more than any other state. Don't these statistics nicely complement my state's placid reputation for loving guns and crude violence?

To add to my disillusionment, a new ruling was passed Feb. 10 that allows officials in Arkansas to force a prisoner on death row to take anti-psychotic medication to make him sane enough to execute, according to the New York Times. Still unsure of where I stand in regard to the death penalty, this new ruling agitated me greatly. It stirred up my emotions and led me closer to reaching some sort of solid opinion on the heated issue.

My initial reaction to the ruling was one of disgust. How can forcing a prisoner on death row to take anti-psychotic medication to make him sane enough to execute justify the murderous act of killing someone who is not even competent enough to realize the implications of his own actions? It is wrong and immoral to punish those who cannot understand what they have done and why they are in their current position.

In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court held in an opinion by Justice Thurgood Marshall that the execution of the insane was barred by the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

So, why the change to reverse something as resolute as law found in the Constitution? In this case, Arkansas officials argued that the prisoner in question, Charles Laverne Singleton, who had killed a grocery store clerk in 1979 and was sentenced to death later that year, posed a danger to himself and to others based on his history of questionable mental health. Officials somehow manipulated this claim to mean he needed medication in order to be executed. Perhaps this makes sense to you, because it doesn't to me.

I certainly can't sympathize with the Federal Appeals Court's decision, since it violates constitutional law and human rights on so many levels.

I completely agree with Singleton's lawyer, Jeffrey Marx Rosenzweig, who asked, "To what extent can a government take invasive, involuntary action using medical personnel who are sworn to heal, save and treat when the result of their medical application and experience is not healing, treating and saving but instead has the result of causing execution?"

To me, the ruling seems very backward, seriously mishandling elements of law and civil liberties. The American judicial system punishes those who have acted wrongly in hopes of preserving justice, but this ruling, despite its "pure" intention of helping to better inform a psychotic inmate of his reasons for execution, reverses that ideal.

So, although I still don't know exactly where I stand with the death penalty in general, I do think this new ruling that allows law enforcement officials to force medication onto a psychotic inmate on death row before execution is incredibly immoral and sick. Being from Texas, where executions are as common as flubbing up at Sherman by traifing something on the kosher side, certainly puts this cruel and unusual practice into perspective.