Death Penalty - Adults Issue Brief

Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, there have been 733 executions; nearly seven percent of these executions occurred in 2001. Today, more than 3,700 people are on death row in America. More than 300 people on death row suffer from a mental disorder. Thirty-one of these people have already been executed, and an appalling 61 percent of these executions took place in the last five years.[i]

The National Mental Health Association (NMHA) believes that mental illness can influence an individual’s mental state at the time he or she commits a crime, can affect how “voluntary” and reliable an individual’s statements might be, can compromise a person’s competence to stand trial and to waive her or her rights, and may have an effect upon a person’s understanding of the criminal justice system.

NMHA supports the American Bar Association’s (ABA) call for a moratorium of the imposition of the death penalty based on the fact that“the fundamental due process is systemically lacking in capital cases.” NMHA bases its support on a number of factors. Research and literature point out that the death penalty is ineffective, and individual cases illustrate that injustices occur in our legal and our social services systems which lead to unfair sentencing.

The Death Penalty is Not an Effective Deterrent

The purported reason for the death penalty is to deter crime. It is a criminological theory that one will avoid proceeding with an action if the consequences outweigh the gains. Thus, if our society sets the consequences for certain crimes as the loss of life, naturally the penalty will act as the deterrent. However, this is not true for the death penalty. “Scientific studies have consistently failed to demonstrate that executions deter people from committing crime. The respected Thorsten Sellin studies of the United States in 1962, 1967 and 1980 concluded that the death penalty was not a deterrent,” (Death Penalty Focus).[ii]

It is often difficult for people with a mental illness or disability to fully assess potential outcomes from different courses of action, and many cannot even comprehend the punishment that awaits them. In 1985, Virginia executed Morris Odell Mason who was diagnosed as mentally retarded. On his way to the execution chamber, he told another inmate, “When I get back, I’m gonna show him how I can play basketball as good as he can.” He was just minutes away from his death and clearly did not understand his impending punishment.iii

The death penalty is also imposed to prevent the criminals who commit the most heinous crimes from re-entering and posing a threat to society. However, our system of proving guilt in a court of law is exposed to tremendous human error. The wrongful execution of an innocent person is an injustice that can never be rectified. Studies show that at least 400 innocent people have been convicted of capital crimes they did not commit and 23 of them have been executed.vi

People who have been diagnosed as mentally incapacitated are at a particularly high risk for a wrongful sentence and wrongful execution. Behaviors such as an eagerness to please others are often displayed in people who have mental illnesses or disabilities. This leads them to answer questions that they don’t fully understand. In 1983, Earl Washington was arrested for a minor assault. However, during the interrogation, he confessed to several crimes including the rape and murder of a young woman, not understanding the ramifications of his confession. Washington was prosecuted for this crime with his confession being the primary piece of evidence. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. His IQ had been assessed at 57 and 69 at different times, which qualified him as mentally retarded. This was not taken into account during the trial of his case. Within days of his execution, a DNA test revealed his innocence, and Virginia Governor Gilmore pardoned him after an 18 year incarceration on death row.[iii]

In Dusky v. United States, 362 U.S. 402 (1960), the U.S. Supreme Court restated the historical rule that a person accused of a crime who is incompetent cannot be proceeded against while he or she remains incompetent. The standards to measure competence are determined by: (1) whether the defendant has a sufficient present ability to consult with his or her lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding, and (2) whether he or she has a rational as well as a factual understanding of the proceedings against him or her.[iv] However,there is no statute to provide the guidelines for legally determining competence. This becomes a highlighted problem in the justice system because a clinician conducts an evaluation using his or her methods, and the judge is completely reliant on the outcomes of the evaluation for the basis of judgment.

NMHA believes that our current system of fact-finding in capital cases fails to identify who among those convicted and sentenced to death has a mental illness. Thus, there is reason to believe that individuals with mental illness are being executed without the criminal justice system knowing of the existence of that illness and, therefore, without the requisite consideration of whether that mental illness may be a mitigating factor in these cases. In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that people with mental illness could be executed if they understand the punishment that awaits them and the reasoning for the execution. This ruling has prompted some states to provide psychiatric treatment to offenders with mental illness on death row in order to “restore competency.” Responding to the issue, the Assistant Attorney General of Alabama has said, “Under Alabama law, you can’t execute someone who is insane. You have to send him to an asylum, cure him up real good, then execute him,” (Amnesty International, 1998).[v]

NMHA is opposed to the practice of having a psychiatrist or other mental health professional treat a person in order to restore competency solely to permit the state to execute that person, and NMHA opposes the practice of medicating defendants involuntarily in order to make them competent either to stand trial or to be executed.

[iv] Texas District Courts. Texas Criminal Procedure and the Offender with Mental Illness: An Analysis and Guide.

Available: www.texasdistrictcourts.com/mentallyilloffender/partfourb.htm

National Mental Health Association
Phone: 800/969-NMHA
TTY Line: 800/433-5959
Email: infoctr@nmha.org

In providing these materials we are enabling our affiliates to respond in a timely way to death row cases through letter-writing campaigns and media outreach. By providing this Justice for Death Row Inmates Resource Kit, NMHA seeks to offer its affiliates and other advocates with important tools to empower and inform their advocacy efforts specific to death penalty cases.

Death Penalty and People with Mental Illness

Background

The Death Penalty is Not an Effective Deterrent