Death Penalty and the Complexity of Mental Illness
Justice system is ill-equipped to deal with mental illness as applied to capital punishment
People with mental illness are overrepresented in our nation’s criminal justice system. Tragically, people with serious and/or persistent mental illness (SPMI) are also overrepresented amongst individuals who have been executed by the state or are currently on death row. While precise numbers are not available, there is evidence that presence of SPMI may increase the likelihood of being charged with a capital crime eligible for the death penalty, and persons of color make up the majority of people on death row.
In death penalty cases, severe mental health symptoms can have broad impacts, including:
- Symptoms increasing as the potential of making false confessions during investigations when facing aggressive questioning or interrogation.
- Active symptoms of mental illness raising questions about criminal intent and responsibility.
- Active symptoms interfering with a person’s ability to participate in their own defense or communicate with their attorneys.
- Anosognosia (when someone is unaware of their own mental health condition) can result in an individual not permitting their attorney to raise mental illness as a defense.
- The inexperience of attorneys who do not understand mental illness, and its impact on perceptions and rationality, further contributes to disparate outcomes.
In 2007, the Supreme Court case Panetti v. Quarterman set the standard for when the government can execute someone with severe mental illness. Fifteen years later, the state of Texas is still trying to execute the petitioner in that case, Scott Panetti, a Texas death-row prisoner diagnosed with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder who believes he is at the center of a struggle between God and Satan.
This week, a federal judge is hearing testimony over whether Panetti meets the standard the Supreme Court outlined in his case in 2007: Does he have a rational understanding of the link between his crime, the 1992 murder of his in-laws, and the impending punishment?
Read about the Panetti v. Quarterman death penalty case and the arguments in front of the upcoming competency hearing in "The Problem With How Courts Decide Whether Someone Can Be Executed" at Slate.com
