10 Psychotic Prisoners Who Ended Up On Death Row

6 /10 Jon Dunkle

From 1981 to 1985, Jon Dunkle hunted down three boys, then raped and murdered them. He was sentenced to death in 1986 for two murders and life imprisonment without parole for one. 

Dunkle has a history of psychiatric problems, including severe learning disabilities, lack of social skills, dyslexia, and temper tantrums.

He has also been diagnosed with disorganized schizophrenia. Dunkle believes he is controlled by the computer and dies every day at night to become a new being after each death. He is still on death row.

5 /10 Horace Kelly

Convicted of three murders and one attempted murder, Horace Kelly was sentenced to death in May 1986. He has been diagnosed with disorganized schizophrenia.

Years on death row at the San Quentin State Prison earned him the nickname “Smelly Kelly” for his filthy habits of refusing to bathe and hoarding feces.

He keeps himself busy by folding toilet paper. A jury in 1998 ruled Kelly mentally competent, but a federal judge stayed the execution. A state expert thinks Kelly exaggerates his condition.

4 /10 James Blair

Sentenced to death in 1989 for murder, James Blair has been diagnosed with psychotic with paranoid delusion. In 1984, he poisoned a neighbor with cyanide because she owed him money. The neighbor died two years later.

He spent a decade in isolation and, through the years, insisted that he was about to be released from prison.

Blair believed his food was poisoned, and there were hidden cameras in the walls. His condition was left untreated until 2014. His diagnosis and sanity remain contested.

3 /10 Darren Stanley

During a four-day rampage in Alameda County in 1989, Darren Stanley committed six robberies and murdered a taxi driver refueling his vehicle at a gas station. He was sentenced to death in 1991.

Stanley has been diagnosed with dementia and psychosis. A CAT scan conducted in 2007 revealed that parts of his brain have decayed. He has auditory and visual delusions that he is unified with God.

2 /10 Delaney Marks

In a string of random shootings in 1990 at Oakland Taco Bell, four people were shot, and two were killed.

The perpetrator was Delaney Marks, who also stole $5 from one of the victims. He was sentenced to death in 1994.

Federal appeal lawyers argued that Marks was psychotic at the time of the murders and therefore incompetent to stand trial.

Mark has been diagnosed with chronic psychosis. He was among the inmates identified in 2014 to receive inpatient psychiatric care.

1 /10 George Emil Banks

On September 25, 1982, a former Camp Hill correctional officer opened fire using an AR-15 automatic weapon in Jenkins Township, Pennsylvania.

Seven children and six adults were killed. Five of the victims were his children, and four of the adults were either known or related to him. He was sentenced to death in June 1983.

During appeals of his case, Banks has been found mentally incompetent. In 2006, psychiatrists testified that he was delusional, psychotic, and irrational.

Another hearing several years later also found him mentally unfit for execution. He remains on death row at SCI Phoenix.