Medicating the Mentally Ill to Allow Execution

Medicating the mentally ill to make them "sane enough" to execute is a very disturbing concept to me. Apparently, the Louisiana legislature is considering a bill that if enacted would make it easier to execute the mentally ill by allowing forms of medication to make an inmate competent enough to be executed (in certain cases). The Louisiana Supreme Court has outlawed the practice in general, but the proposed law finds a way to get through a loop hole in the State Supreme Court's opinion on the issue by allowing medication in cases where the inmate poses a risk to himself or others.

Personally, I find this question not only disturbing, but also intellectually interesting. It creates quite a quandary really. The United States Supreme Court has found it unconstitutional to execute the mentally ill. Arguably, a person with a mental illness can be medicated to a point of sanity that makes him or her competent enough to be executed (I don't understand the difference personally, but who I am?). What is a prison warden to do if an inmate refuses to be medicated in order that he or she can stay sick enough to be legally incompetent to be executed (and thereby stay alive)? Is it our place to force medication on a person simple so that we might take their life?

Louisiana prosecutors push bill on execution of mentally ill