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Capital Cases

Egregious Instances of a Horrendous Practice

Each year the number of people with disabilities increases.  In February of 2003 charts from the International Center for Disability Information indicated the number of individuals in the United States experiencing the loss of one or more “essential life functions” to be approximately 58,038,500.

A high percentage of people on death row are mentally ill or cognitively disabled.  Estimations vary greatly from 5% to 20% and even higher.  NCPD, as the Catholic Church’s advocate for people with assorted disabilities, is deeply concerned about this population.

bulletIn 1977 the U.S. Supreme Court determined the death penalty was not “cruel and unusual punishment.” 
bulletIn 1986 the Court ruled that people with mental illness could be executed if they understood the punishment that awaited them and the justification for the execution.
bullet In 1989 the judges ruled it was not “cruel and unusual punishment,” in the case of execution of mentally retarded individuals.
bulletIn June 2002 the Court ruled in Atkins that the capital punishment of the cognitively disabled was unconstitutional.

Although we appreciate the huge step take by the US Supreme Court in Atkins, this by no means has resolved the issue: 

bulletProsecutors continue to acknowledge only severe cases of cognitive disabilities as being relevant under the decision, while using restricted diagnostic standards to avoid the Atkins restriction in cases involving defendants with mild or moderate intellectual disabilities. 
bulletThey also use skewed expert testimony whose testing measures do not diagnose intellectual disabilities, when standard clinical measures indicate such a diagnosis was appropriate. 
bulletFinally, prosecutors often fail to acknowledge the pervasive nature of this disability and the challenges it poses in individuals, especially with respect to impulse control, suggestibility, and moral reasoning.

How different is the competency of an individual who scored 68 from an individual who scored 72 on their IQ test if 70 is considered the cut-off point?

Many experts providing services and training to those with cognitive disabilities no longer use the old IQ evaluation but focus on the level of assistance an individual needs to live and function.  As lessons are learned and/or competencies acquired, the individual moves from one classification to another.  How competently is competency determined within our court system? 

Atkins in no way addressed the issues surrounding the execution of the mentally ill. In a report on the Ragged Edge website (A major disability advocacy magazine and website), Dave Reynolds, who with many of us within the disability community, is strongly opposed to the death penalty for anyone, summarizes this position:

To say those injustices happen because these convicts are incompetent, helpless and child-like, insults not only them, but also people with disabilities who are making good choices every day.  When we make “special” laws and this person lives because of his “competency” score and this one dies because of his, we throw up more barriers for people who struggle to get others to recognize their abilities and the right to direct their own lives. 

Most states do not recognize even active mental illness as a mitigating factor for juries to consider in the punishment phase of capital trials.  Many US prosecutors have argued mental illness as an aggravating factor in seeking capital punishment.  Simple justice demands that state and federal statutes be amended to prohibit prosecutors from arguing a defendant’s significant active mental disability as an additional reason that he should be killed by the state.

A 2000 study of 16 death row inmates in California by Freedman and Hemenway found that all had some evidence of mental illness:

·        14 had Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

·        13 had severe Depression

·        12 had evidence of traumatic brain injury

Dorothy O. Lewis and her colleagues in the mid-1980s concluded that 50% of juveniles on death row had some form of psychosis.

The “correction” systems in some localities are also attempting to “restore competency” through forced medication for the sole reason of rendering the prisoner competent for execution.  An Assistant Attorney General of Alabama illustrates that point well in a widely quoted 1998 statement:

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

ACTION:  Eliminate the death penalty for all, not just special populations.

Because every public issue affects persons with disabilities,

they should be consulted in the development of every policy.

 
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Website last updated: 06/11/2004