A schizophrenic man sentenced to death for the 1992 murder of his in-laws in Texas will not be executed because of his illness, a federal judge ruled today after a 20-year legal battle.

The federal judge in Austin, the capital of this State, reached this decision by ruling that the mental illness of Scott Panetti, 65 today, “does not allow him to understand the reasons for his execution.”

Panetti was sentenced to death in 1995.

His execution “would violate the Eighth Amendment (of the Constitution), which prohibits all cruel and unusual punishment,” added Justice Robert Pittman, citing a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision. The judge reached that conclusion after a three-day hearing that only concerned the mental health of the death row inmate.

The ruling “prevents the State of Texas from retaliating against a man who suffers from severe schizophrenia and as a result has a distorted view of the world around him,” said his attorney, Gregory Wirciok.

Although doctors had diagnosed Scott Panetti with schizophrenia from a young age, Texas authorities insisted on the death penalty after his last appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected in 2003.

In September 1992, Panetti killed his in-laws in front of his estranged wife and their three-year-old daughter. Three years later the judge who tried him gave him permission, despite the objections of even the prosecutors, to undertake his own defense. “Dressed in a burgundy cowboy outfit, Panetti spoke gibberish throughout the trial” and called as defense witnesses Jesus Christ, assassinated President John F. Kennedy and Pope John Paul II, Judge Pittman recalled.