The Problem With How Courts Decide Whether Someone Can Be Executed
“The criminal justice system is unequipped to grapple with the complexity of mental illness.“ In this Slate.com reporting by Maria Armstrong-Lopez, I learned that the 2007 Supreme Court case Panetti v. Quarterman set the standard for when the government can execute someone with severe mental illness. I also learned that, fifteen years later, the state of Texas governor Greg […]
20th Anniversary: Assessing the Purported SCOTUS Ban on Executing Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities
From the Death Penalty Information Center: “In its landmark decision in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the use of the death penalty against individuals with intellectual disability constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Twenty years later, however, “there is not just the risk, but the certainty” […]
Benjamin Cole
With Execution Looming, Judge Denies Competency Hearing for Oklahoma Death-Row Prisoner Death Penalty Info. Center: “Cole’s defense team issued a statement from assistant federal defender Tom Hird in response to the ruling, saying, “Benjamin Cole is incapacitated by his mental illness to the point of being essentially non-functional. His own attorneys have not been able […]
Court Overturns Ohio Death Sentence After Defense Expert Testifies that One Quarter of Urban Black Men Should be Locked Up or Thrown Away
This story from the Death Penalty Information Center shows some consequences of the racialization of mental health in the criminal justice system: “In a unanimous ruling on August 22, 2022, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the “racialized testimony” offered by a defense expert at the […]
Nikolas Cruz’s defense says his brain was ‘poisoned’ by birth mother’s addictions in death penalty trial
Should someone with an intellectual/developmental disability like Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD, formerly Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) ever be sentenced to death? The defense for Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz, is arguing that due to intellectual disability caused by FASD, in conjunction with severe mental illness symptoms, it is not acceptable to issue a death penalty sentence. […]
Man with psychiatric disability leaves S. Carolina death row as state firing squad trial starts
A South Carolina inmate who killed four people in two states is off death row after a federal appeals court ruled the judge who sentenced him to die nearly two decades ago did not consider his abusive childhood or mental illness. Allen either was sent or volunteered to go to a psychiatric hospital seven times […]