Equal Protection
The protections available in North Carolina capital trials for people with mental retardation should also be available for those with similar disabilities that result from severe mental illness.
The United States Supreme Court, in Atkins, excluded people with mental retardation from capital punishment because it recognized the impact on their behavior and culpability due to deficits in reasoning, judgment, and impulse control.[i] People with mental illness suffer from many of the same deficits identified by the Supreme Court, which reduce their moral culpability and jeopardize the fairness of a capital prosecution. For example, schizophrenia is a devastating brain disorder that interferes with a person’s ability to think clearly, distinguish reality from fantasy, manage emotions, make decisions and relate to others. The specific symptoms include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and grossly disorganized behavior.”[ii] The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) describes people who suffer from schizophrenia as experiencing “a range of cognitive and emotional dysfunctions that include perception, inferential thinking, language and communication, . . ..”[iii] Even this brief description of schizophrenic symptoms illustrates that people who suffer from psychosis, like those with mental retardation, have great difficulty in communicating with and understanding others, engaging in a logical cost benefit analysis, and evaluating the consequences of and controlling their behavior.
Some have questioned whether people with severe mental illness should have access to the procedural safeguards available for people with mental retardation because they mistakenly believe that a determination of mental illness is significantly more complicated than a determination of mental retardation. In fact, the definition of severe mental illness in the proposed legislation provides clear and strict guidelines that mental health professionals can use to accurately identify people with severe mental illness. Moreover, advocates for persons with mental illness believe defendants with the same disabilities as those who are already protected under our laws should be afforded the same protections, regardless of whether the identification of that illness may be complicated in some cases.
[i] Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 320 (2002).
[ii] American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. 1994).
Cruel and Unusual Punishment
The United States Supreme Court has made clear that the death penalty is unconstitutional and is nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering unless a sentence of death serves two principles: retribution and deterrence.[i] Just as the Supreme Court has decided that mental retardation and juvenile status impose functional impairments that significantly diminish culpability and deterability,[ii] neither of these goals is met by executing a person with a severe mental disability.
[i] Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782,798 (1982).
[ii] See Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 320 (2002), and Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S 551 (2005).
RETRIBUTION
In determining the appropriate sentence for a capital defendant, the Supreme Court recognizes “evidence about the defendant’s background and character is relevant because of the belief, long held by this society, that defendants who commit criminal acts that are attributable to a disadvantaged background, or to emotional or mental problems, may be less culpable than defendants who have no such excuse.” Recognizing that only those most deserving of execution should be put to death, the Supreme Court created exclusions for people with mental retardation and for juveniles. For the same reasons, executing those with severe mental illness does not advance the retributive function of the death penalty.
In North Carolina, less than one percent of people who commit murder receive a sentence of death. If the culpability of over ninety nine percent of North Carolina murderers is insufficient to justify the most extreme sanction, the lesser culpability of the severely mentally impaired offender does not merit that form of retribution. North Carolina must take steps to ensure that defendants with severe mental illness at the time of the crime are not in the top less than one percent of the most culpable murderers, described by the Supreme Court as the “worst of the worst.”
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DETERRENCE
The goals of deterrence are not served by executing individuals who are unable to recognize that certain behavior might result in the death penalty, and thus cannot adjust their conduct accordingly. The United States Supreme Court has been clear that “the death penalty has little deterrent force against defendants who have a reduced capacity for considered choice.” In Atkins, the Court explained that deterrence is unlikely to be a factor for defendants who have “the diminished ability to understand and process information, to learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, or to control impulses.”
Just two years after the decision in Atkins, the Court precluded the death penalty for juveniles who were under the age of 18 when they committed the crime, recognizing that our society views juveniles as less culpable than the average criminal. The Roper Court recognized that juveniles do not make a “cost benefit analysis” or process the possibility of execution as a penalty and control their conduct based on that information.
Like juveniles and defendants with mental retardation, those with severe mental disabilities suffer from behavioral and cognitive limitations that render them unable to make a considered choice. Mental illness encompasses categories of mental disorders marked by impairment in cognition, mood, and behavior stemming from abnormal brain function. The importance the Court places on this type of functional and cognitive impairment in assessing both culpability and vulnerability in legal proceedings casts serious doubt on the constitutionality of imposing the death penalty on persons with severe mental disability.
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