Calvert v. Texas

Issues: (1) Whether the Constitution prevents a state from allowing a defendant to represent himself in a capital case when the defendant is mentally competent to waive counsel but is not mentally competent to conduct trial proceedings in his capital trial; (2) whether the Eighth Amendment prohibits the state of Texas from sentencing petitioner James Calvert to death on a finding of future dangerousness based in substantial part on graphic testimony and evidence about an attack on a prison official committed by another inmate in another prison at another time, having no connection to Calvert; and (3) whether the constitutional violation resulting from the trial court’s direction to administer a 50,000- volt electric shock to Calvert during his trial to “enforce decorum” because Calvert failed to stand when responding to a question from the court constitutes structural error.