Death Penalty Has Been a Long-Contested Issue

Death penalty has been a long-contested issue among States, legislators, policy makers, and individuals alike. So complicated is the issue that no two opinions appear to be the same. Indeed, the divergence of the various opinions extend to a variety of concerns within the death penalty and the Constitution themselves, including the fairness of capital punishment and decisions relating to it in terms of gender, class, race, and so on. One of the most prominent issues within the death penalty is probably mental illness and retardation. As pointed out by one of the authors to be examined below, the law prohibits imposing the death penalty for persons who are mentally incompetent. The question is, however, how many mentally incompetent persons in fact declare their incompetence?

The case Atkins v. Virginia involves Daryl Renard Atkins, who was accused of abduction, armed robbery, and capital murder. After it was revealed that he had a full IQ of 59, the Virginia Supreme Court ordered a second sentencing hearing after the first, which sentence him to death. After testimony from a psychiatric professional that Atkins was not mentally retarded, the Court upheld the sentence, citing that the Constitution does not prohibit the execution of a mentally retarded person. The rest of the section considers the Constitution and the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment." Based on this, the general opinion today is that it is "cruel and unusual" to use the death penalty against a mentally retarded person.

Tobolowsky's Chapter 9 focuses the discussion of the death penalty in terms of both mental illness and mental retardation. These conditions have been addressed by the Supreme Court as a result of their effect on culpability and the ability of individuals to take responsibility for their actions. The author starts by distinguishing terms such as "mental illness," which is a broad term referring to a number of specific disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, and anxiety. Mental retardation, on the other hand, is more specifically focused on an individual's ability or lack thereof to function on a normal cognitive level. Although these conditions can offer mitigating circumstances when providing evidence for criminal competence, it is not necessarily an indicator of incompetence to stand trial and be convicted. While the chapter therefore considers the death penalty and the exclusion of mentally retarded persons from this penalty like the case discussion above, it goes a step further by also considering issues of mental health in this regard. On this premise, the article argues that it is unfair

The Human Rights Watch article, again, focuses only on the mental retardation issue as it relates to the death penalty, voicing a strong and very detailed opinion against executing those with diminished mental capacities. As such, it is far more details in its description and support of the opinion than either of the other readings. The authors point out that, although it is unlawful to subject mentally incompetent persons to court trials and the death penalty, declarations of mental incompetence are rare. The result is that many who are in fact mentally incompetent are subjected to trials and receive the death penalty. The article argues that many of these cases include innocent people being put to death for crimes they neither committed nor understood properly.