{"id":51860,"date":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.findlaw-admin.com\/ability-legal\/supreme\/legal-commentary\/executing-the-mentally-ill-and-the-mentally-retarded.html"},"modified":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","slug":"executing-the-mentally-ill-and-the-mentally-retarded","status":"publish","type":"supreme","link":"https:\/\/supreme.findlaw.com\/legal-commentary\/executing-the-mentally-ill-and-the-mentally-retarded.html","title":{"rendered":"Executing the Mentally Ill and the Mentally Retarded"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Executing the Mentally Ill and the Mentally Retarded:
Three Key Recent Cases from Texas and Virginia Show How States Can Evade the Supreme Court’s Death Penalty Rulings <\/span><\/h1><\/td>\n <\/tr>\n

By ELAINE CASSEL<\/h2><\/a><\/td>\n <\/tr>\n

Thursday, Jun. 22, 2006<\/td>\n\n <\/tr>\n <\/table>\n

Since the Supreme Court lifted its ban on the death penalty in 1976, Texas and Virginia have led the country in executions; Texas has executed 366 defendants; Virginia, 95. Both states’ death penalty verdicts have been subject to a high level of scrutiny in the past few years, by both state and federal courts.<\/p>

Over the past two months, three especially troubling cases played out in these two states; two are from Virginia, and one from Texas. The defendants whose lives hung in the balance were mentally ill or retarded and, in one case, both. <\/p> \n\n

In spite of Supreme Court decisions that should have limited the men’s punishment to life in prison without the possibility of parole, prosecutors in both states were dead-set on seeing the men die. <\/p>

In this article, I will explain the current status of the law on executing mentally ill and retarded persons, and argue that in states like Texas and Virginia, the Supreme Court’s mandate that these classes of persons be spared the ultimate penalty has been reduced to mere wishful thinking.<\/p>

The only good news here, as I will explain, is a conscientious decision by Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine to reexamine one of these cases. <\/p>

The Legal Standard for Not-Guilty-By-Reason-of-Insanity<\/b><\/p>

The 1968 Supreme Court decision of Ford v. Wainwright<\/i><\/a><\/b> was unequivocal: The <\/sup>Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment bars the execution of a prisoner who is, by the applicable legal standard, “insane.” <\/p>

Before considering the standard when execution is at issue, it’s useful first to consider the related, but distinct, standard to find a criminal defendant not guilty by reason of “insanity” – of which readers may be more likely to be aware.<\/p>

For a jury to find a defendant not guilty by reason of insanity, it generally must find that, by reason of mental defect or illness, the defendant did not appreciate the wrongfulness of the criminal conduct, and thus should not be held culpable under the law. <\/p> Column continues below \u2193<\/a>\n