The New York Times (10/10, A17, Liptak, Subscription Publication) reports, “In a pair of cases argued Tuesday, the Supreme Court considered what to do when people convicted of capital crimes are mentally incompetent and so unable to help their lawyers with challenges to their convictions and sentences.” The Times continues, “The lower courts in the two cases had imposed indefinite stays, saying the proceedings should wait until the prisoners regained their mental competency,” but, the Times reports, there “appeared to be little support among the justices for that approach. Some of them appeared to sense gamesmanship from defense lawyers effectively seeking to make sure that death sentences are never carried out.”

The AP (10/10, Holland) reports, “The Supreme Court seemed inclined Tuesday to eliminate the authority of federal judges to indefinitely delay a death row inmate’s federal appeals in the hope that the convict would become mentally competent enough to help his or her lawyer with the appeals.” While “inmates appealing state death sentences to federal court have a right to a lawyer,” so far “the courts have never said whether the inmates have to be mentally competent enough to help their lawyers with their federal appeals.” Notably, attorneys “on both sides cited a court filing by the American Psychiatric Association which said that up to 90 percent of competency cases are resolved in six to nine months.” The cases in question are Tibbals v. Carter, 11-218 and Ryan v. Gonzales, 10-930.

Related Links:

— “Supreme Court Considers Indefinite Stays of Execution, “Adam Liptak, The New York Times, October 9, 2012.

The AP (10/5, Johnson) reported that the FDA announced it is “stepping up its fight against counterfeit and other potentially harmful medicine sold over the Internet. The agency is ordering operators of about 4,100 websites to immediately stop selling unapproved medications to US consumers.” The move is part of a week-long “crackdown by regulatory bodies and law enforcement” worldwide aimed at “making the global medicine supply safer.” In addition, it “follows the FDA’s launch last Friday of a campaign to warn consumers that the vast majority of online pharmacies do not follow laws or pharmacy industry standards and their products could harm or even kill people.” The agency’s campaign includes the new BeSafeRx website, which “explains the risks of fake online pharmacies and how to tell the difference between those websites and legitimate ones.”

Related Links:

— “FDA fights Web pharmacies selling unapproved drugs, “Linda A. Johnson, The Washington Post, October 5, 2012.

Medwire (10/6, Robertson) reported, “Among patients with diabetes and comorbid depression, the time point at which they developed depression may have important implications for their clinical management,” according to research presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes 48th Annual Meeting. A “study of 1384 individuals with Type 2 diabetes who completed a validated patient health questionnaire showed that 21% had developed depression at least 2 years prior to being diagnosed with diabetes, while 15% developed it at least 2 years after diagnosis.” Individuals “with post-diabetes depression were significantly more likely to have a glycated hemoglobin level of less than 7% compared with those who had prediabetes depression or no depression, at 52% versus 40% and 39%, respectively.”

Related Links:

— “Time is of the essence in depressed diabetes patients, “Sally Robertson, MedWire News, October 5, 2012.

The New York Times (10/8, Dao, Subscription Publication) reports that “nearly half of all suicides in the military having been committed with privately owned firearms.” In response, the Pentagon is “developing a suicide prevention campaign that will encourage friends and families of potentially suicidal service members to safely store or voluntarily remove personal firearms from their homes.” In addition, “Congress appears poised to enact legislation that would allow military mental health counselors and commanders to talk to troops about their private firearms” and would amend a 2011 law that prohibited DOD from collected on legally owned firearms. Sen. Inhofe “who sponsored the original 2011 restrictions, said he would support the new amendment ‘if it clears up any confusion.'”

Related Links:

— “As Military Suicides Rise, Focus Is on Private Weapons,”James Dao, The New York Times, October 7, 2012.

There was a fair amount of coverage of a new report (10/3) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found that teen drunk driving has declined. Much of the coverage has focused on the reasons behind the trend.

Bloomberg News (10/3, Lopatto) says that the CDC report found that “drunk driving among US teens fell 54 percent in the past two decades, a trend helped by laws to curb underage alcohol consumption and higher gas prices keeping high school students off the road.” Citing the report in the Atlanta-based CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the article details that “in 2011, 10 percent of high school students reported drinking and driving, compared with 22 percent in 1991.” According to Bloomberg News, “people ages 16 to 20 are 17 times more likely to die in a crash when their blood alcohol is .08 percent, the legal limit in many states,” the report found.

Reuters (10/3, Beasley) quotes CDC Director Thomas Frieden, who told reporters, “We’ve seen really good progress.” He added, “We’re moving in the right direction, but we need to keep up the momentum.” However, the article also notes that the CDC report also showed that last year, almost 1 million high school students consumed alcohol before getting into the driver’s seat.

In its “Booster Shots” blog, the Los Angeles Times (10/3, Brown) details that “the CDC analysis was compiled from data from the national Youth Risk Behavior Survey.” The blog describes that the “American public and private school students in grades 9 through 12 volunteered to answer an anonymous, self-administered questionnaire that asked about their alcohol use (including binge drinking, defined as having had five or more drinks in a row on at least one day in the preceding 30 days) as well as whether they drink and drive.” The article adds, “boys were more likely to drink and drive than girls, and white and Latino students were more likely to drink and drive than black students.”

Related Links:

— “Teen Drunk Driving Falls on High Gas Prices, Less Alcohol, “Elizabeth Lopatto, Bloomberg, October 3, 2012.