Punishment: Is It Ethical To Execute The Mentally Ill

Enedelia Duran
Mr. William Taliancich
ENGL 1301
Date 16, 2013
Is It Ethical to Execute the mentally Ill
Imagine sitting down on your sofa and watching the news. Two little girls were murdered by their father. While watching the news many of us think how could a father do this to his own children? But did the father really killed his daughters? It was later learned that the father suffered from a mental illness Bipolar Disorder. So the question I pose to you today is one that has been debated for many years. Is it ethical to put to death with a mental illness?
So what is mental illness? According to the National Alliance on mental illness as a medical conditions that disrupt a person 's thinking, feeling, mood, and ability to others and
There is a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty according to a 1990 U.S. Government report. Racism is not the only problem with Capital Punishment. Many inmates on death row suffer from mental retardation. In fact the 1984 ECOSOC safeguards state that death penalty must not be carried out on persons who have become insane, while the ECOSOC resolution 1989/64 on the executation of the 1984 safeguards recommends that UN members states eliminate the death penalty for persons suffering from mental illness or extremely limited competence. Amnesty International has documented the cases of more than 50 prisoners suffering from mental illness who have been executed in the U.S. in the past decade. Humanitarian standards maintain that mentally impaired people should not be held criminally responsible for their acts. The prohibition against executing insane recognizes that killing people who cannot comprehend the nature and purpose of their punishment is not a deterrent or retribution. Despite all this the mentally ill are still being executed. Innocent people will be killed if the death penalty is kept in the same way that it is used today. Three hundred fifty people convicted of capital crimes in the U.S. between 1990 and 1985were innocent of the crime charged, according to a 1987 study. Some prisoners escaped execution by minutes, but 23 were not so lucky
Oklahoma, it is probably unconstitutional to execute anyone for a crime committed while under sixteen. In any event, no state affirmatively permits execution of such youth. Twelve states and the federal government prohibit execution of people who are mentally retarded, an apparent trend, as recently as 1989 only two states did so. These prohibitions, based primarily on perceptions of culpability for the crime committed, exists independently of the eight amendment bar, recognized in Ford, that prohibits execution of a person who is "incompetent" at the pointed time of execution. In sharp contrast to the immunity from execution granted to children and people with mental retardation, no state prohibits execution of a person who was mentally ill at the of the offense. The fourteenth amendment 's injunction requiring equal protection under the law is violated by this difference in treatment because there is no good reason for it, although as noted in part one, there are psychological differences between people with mental retardation and the people with mental illness, there are no significant, legally relevant differences between these two groups, or between them and children. Thus, a state does not treat all three groups similarly in terms of eligibility for execution is acting