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 […]
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 […]