JACKSON — The capital murder case of Bobby Glen Wilcher, whose execution was halted by the U.S. Supreme Court this past week, contains elements the justices are destined to address, say some longtime court watchers.

Past cases show the justices are interested in exploring questions of whether to execute the mentally ill and when to cut off a condemned inmate’s appeals, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the anti-capital punishment Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.

“There’s always the danger of someone jerking the courts around, saying I do (want to die) or I don’t, switching off and on,” Dieter said. “This may have been at least enough (for the court) to say, ‘All right, he signaled his desire to appeal ... you don’t have to spend a lot of time on this, but you at least should take his word for it.”’

A month ago, Wilcher told a federal judge he wanted to drop his appeals. A July 11 execution date was set. Wilcher himself then filed an appeal with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, saying he had changed his mind. The 5th Circuit declined to stop the execution.

On Tuesday night, the Supreme Court temporarily stopped the execution about a half hour before Wilcher was to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. The stay was issued about 6:27 p.m.

Leonard Vincent, an attorney for the Mississippi Department of Corrections, said the 5th Circuit, in denying a stay, dismissed questions about Wilcher’s mental illness and whether the inmate knowingly gave up his appeals.

“We don’t know what was the Supreme Court’s thinking,” Vincent said about a reason for the stay.

Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said Wilcher was despondent and cried when told of the stay.

“I’ve never seen an individual so upset that he didn’t get executed,” Epps said.

The justices issued what Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif., called a “boilerplate” stay, one in which they usually do not comment on the case.

Scheidegger said the question for Wilcher appears to be whether he knew what he was doing in seeking to drop his appeals.

“It is certainly well established that the mentally competent person can drop his appeals if he chooses to,” Scheidegger said. “It doesn’t take very long in most cases to determine whether a person is mentally competent. It’s a fairly low threshold of mental ability ... you know what you’re doing and you choose to do it.”

Dieter said the lower courts might have acted hastily in ruling that Wilcher had no appeals or filed them too late.

“It’s true he was waiving his appeals but the Supreme Court might want to clarify that even at the 11th hour, a person can change their mind ... and the courts should respect that,” Dieter said. “The Supreme Court may feel that is important enough to hear a case like that to make it clear.”

Wilcher’s attorney, Cliff Johnson of Jackson, claims his client is mentally ill and questions whether Wilcher is capable of making a decision to drop his appeals. Wilcher takes medication for a bipolar disorder, a chemical imbalance which some doctors say causes people to experience extreme highs on the one pole, and depression on the other.