There is no categorical ban on the execution of people with mental illness. A small number of states have laws that create an exemption for some seriously mentally ill defendants.
American Bar Association Death Penalty Due Process Review Project
Military Veterans and the Death Penalty (Features information on PTSD and other combat-related mental health problems)
The U.S. Supreme Court has said a defendant’s mental illness makes him or her less morally culpability and must be taken into consideration as an important reason to spare his or her life. However, as was initially the case with intellectual disability and young age, the Court has not barred the death penalty for those with serious mental illness. When the Court prohibited the death penalty for the intellectually disabled and for juveniles, it found that they were members of identifiable groups who have diminished responsibility for their actions and hence should not be considered the worst and most culpable defendants. Many mental health experts believe that people with severe mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder may have similar cognitive impairments that interfere with their decision-making. The American Psychiatric Association and the American Bar Association, among others, have called for a ban on the death penalty for those with severe mental illness.
Some defendants are so mentally ill as to lack all understanding of their crime and its consequences and may be considered mentally incompetent. Such individuals may be unfit to stand trial or be found not guilty by reason of insanity. If they are convicted and become incompetent while on death row, they cannot be executed, under earlier Supreme Court precedent. However, most people with mental illness — including many with severe mental illness — are not mentally incompetent.
Mental health issues have broad impact in death-penalty cases. One in ten prisoners executed in the United States are “volunteers” — defendants or prisoners who have waived key trial or appeal rights to facilitate their execution. Mental illness also affects defendants’ decisions to represent themselves, their ability to work with counsel, and jury’s perceptions of their motives and whether they pose a future danger to society if they are sentenced to life in prison.
There are at least three hurdles to excluding the severely mentally ill: 1. Unlike age and intellectual ability, it is difficult to define the class of mentally ill defendants who should be exempted and to determine whether their illness affected their judgment when they offended. 2. States have so far been reluctant to adopt such bans, though society continues to evolve in terms of its understanding of mental illness. 3. The membership of the Supreme Court has shifted since some of the earlier exemptions were decided. Nevertheless, the prior decisions could serve as important precedents, capable of being extended to the mentally ill.
DPIC has tracked the various state legislative efforts to address the mental illness issue. It frequently highlights instances in which mentally ill defendants receive unfair death-penalty trials, face execution, or have been granted clemency or other relief. It also gathers statements from relevant leaders in the mental health field regarding this issue.
This July, in honor of Disability Pride Month, the Death Penalty Information Center is posting a weekly feature highlighting issues related to the death penalty and disability, as well as individuals who have played key roles in changing the laws to protect prisoners with…
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the impact of mental illness is keenly felt on death row: at least two in five people executed have a documented serious mental illness, and research suggests that many more death-sentenced prisoners are undiagnosed. A national majority, 60 % of Americans, opposes executing people with serious mental illness. In the past two decades, science and medicine have contributed to a much better understanding of how serious mental illness, which refers to…
Oklahoma prisoner Wade Lay (pictured) will not be executed on June 6 , 2024 as scheduled because a Pittsburg County judge has found him mentally incompetent to be executed. “ The available evidence demonstrates, by a preponderance or greater weight of the evidence, that Mr. Lay is currently incompetent to be executed according to the governing legal standards,” Judge Tim Mills wrote. Defense and state experts who examined Mr. Lay found that, due to his schizophrenia, delusions, and paranoia, he…
On March 28 , Judge Michael Hogan of Pittsburg County ruled that James Ryder is incompetent to be executed after a hearing where experts established Mr. Ryder’s serious mental illness. “[We are] relieved the court reached the only logical conclusion… James has no rational understanding of why Oklahoma plans to execute him,” said Mr. Ryder’s attorney, Emma Rolls, following the decision. “ James has suffered from schizophrenia for nearly 40 years and has little connection to objective reality.”…
On March 27 , 2024 , the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ( TCCA ) resentenced death row prisoner Randall Mays to life in prison without the possibility of parole after an expert for the state conceded that the evidence presented by Mr. Mays’ attorneys indicates he is intellectually disabled, and thus ineligible for the death penalty. Originally sentenced to death in 2008 for the murder of two Henderson County, Texas, sheriff’s deputies, Mr. Mays’ attorneys have long argued that he should be…
