Some states require a prediction of future dangerousness in order to impose a death sentence. In , the Supreme Court ruled in Ford v.
Wainwright , U. Whether the aim is to protect the condemned from fear and pain without comfort of understanding, or to protect the dignity of society itself from the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance, the restriction finds enforcement in the Eighth Amendment. Conversely, the courts allow people with mental illness to be executed if they understand the punishment that awaits them and why they are being put to death. Similarly, MHA is opposed to the practice of medicating defendants involuntarily in order to make them competent to stand trial.
MHA believes that our current system of fact-finding in capital cases fails to identify who among those facing a possible death penalty actually has a mitigating mental health condition. MHA believes that whenever a possible death sentence is invoked, states should make available to defense counsel, at the time that counsel first is in contact with the accused, the resources to enable counsel to retain a qualified expert to evaluate the mental state of the accused at the time of the offense, at the time of pre-trial preparation, and, if necessary, at the time of trial.
MHA applauds the U. Simmons that declared the juvenile death penalty unconstitutional. Impulsiveness, poor judgment, and lack of self-control are characteristics of childhood and are the reasons we limit many of the rights of minors.
The age, maturity, mental status, and any history of abuse or trauma of a youthful offender should always be considered in deciding his or her punishment. MHA considers the execution of people for crimes they committed as children to be unjust and inhumane, serving no principled purpose, and demeaning to our system of justice, and thus endorses the Court's holding that the juvenile death penalty constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment.
For the same reason, this position statement takes the next step, in positing that regardless of whether the defendant is able to show the causation required by the insanity defense, no one should be threatened or put to death while experiencing a serious mental illness. MHA urges that affiliates and advocates advocate a moratorium on executions, fight to spare the lives of people with mental illness accused of capital crimes by prohibiting use of the death penalty for all persons with serious mental illness, and seek to maximize due process protections and assistance by legal counsel to avoid discrimination and unfairness in capital cases,.
Admitted inability to make fair death determinations led Illinois first to declare a moratorium in and then to abolish the death penalty in In the last decade, seven states have abolished the death penalty: New Jersey , New York , New Mexico , Illinois , Connecticut , Maryland , and Nebraska He was rejected by the Army after failing the entry exam three times, and unable to decipher a job application, he did the menial work that came his way, cutting grass, cleaning houses and taking tickets for a traveling carnival.
Now, at 33, he has spent 12 years on death row in Livingston for the rape and murder of a year-old woman, Kelly Donovan, who was stationed at the Air Force base in Mr. Cruz, who in an interview this week took full responsibility for his crime and expressed anguished remorse, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday at 6 p.
A defense psychologist testified at trial that tests, as well as a review of school records, showed Mr. Cruz to be mentally retarded. The state did not dispute this. Indeed, the prosecutor argued that the fact that Mr. Cruz awaits execution at a time when there is growing opposition across the country to the execution of the mentally retarded.
Federal law, approved by President Ronald Reagan, bars the execution of the mentally retarded convicted in federal courts. Of the 38 states that permit capital punishment, 13 have laws that prohibit the execution of someone who is mentally retarded; in New York that legislation was signed into law by Gov.
George E. In Florida, Gov. Here in Texas, Gov. George W. Bush has opposed laws that would prohibit the execution of the mentally retarded. Edwards said. He said he would try to raise the I. Ellis said. He wants a full evidentiary hearing on Mr. The Bexar County district attorney, Susan D. Reed, whose office prosecuted Mr. Cruz, said in an interview this week that she opposed Mr.
Reed said. She added that Mr. Cruz had a history of violence and had once fired a shotgun at a man. The man, Arthur Jones, who never spoke to the police about the incident, characterized it in testimony at Mr.
Reed also said that the evidence about Mr. And Hill's case is not unique. Although experts have diagnosed dozens of prisoners on Georgia's death row as mentally retarded, only one has ever met Georgia's burden of proof. Second, Hill is set to be executed despite overwhelming and unanimous evidence that his execution is unconstitutional because of a law passed by Congress in that severely limits the rights of criminal defendants.
That law, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act prohibits prisoners from filing more than one habeas petition challenging violation of their constitutional rights, even in cases where they have an indisputable claim for relief.
In Hill's case, this means that even though the state's experts have stated categorically and under oath that their prior testimony was wrong, the courts feel powerless to correct the injustice resulting from that testimony.
As Judge Rosemary Barkett put it, this leads to the "perverse consequence" that "a federal court must acquiesce to, even condone, a state's insistence on carrying out the unconstitutional execution of a mentally retarded person. Because of the act, Hill has only one option left to vindicate his constitutional rights — an "original" habeas petition filed in the Supreme Court.
While most cases reach the Supreme Court on appeal after having been heard in the lower courts, an "original" petition is filed for the first time in the Supreme Court. Texas took that discretion to mean — wrongly in the view of many lawyers and mental health experts — that it could set its own definition of retardation.
Instead of a clinical or scientific approach, based on widely recognized tests set out by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Texas decided to go its own way. It came up with a set of seven criteria, known as "Briseno factors" after the decision that announced them, to determine which prisoners with learning difficulties should live and which should die.
By implication anyone less impaired than Steinbeck's fictional migrant ranch worker should have no constitutional protection. Kovarsky will be petitioning the supreme court on Monday for a stay of execution to give time for Texas's out-lying approach to intellectual disability to be confronted. The supreme court has a growing problem in this area with states coming close to open defiance of the will of the highest judicial panel in the land in relation to the execution of people with learning difficulties.
Last month Warren Hill came within 90 minutes of execution in Georgia. The prisoner had been diagnosed by the state's own courts as being "mentally retarded" in all probability, but Georgia is the only state in the union that insists on a standard of proof of intellectual impairment that is "beyond a reasonable doubt".
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