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Unit.B.5.6. Disabled/Mentally Challenged Offender

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Mentally Challenged Case: Issue Mentally Challenged on Death Row in the United States In June, 2002, "in a landmark decision the US Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute what it terms mentally retarded prisoners. The decision marks a reversal of a 1989 Supreme Court judgment that there was no national consensus against such executions and that they did not entail "cruel and unusual punishment" or violate the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. The new ban will apply to prisoners with IQs of 70 and under" (Nebraska, 2002). This ruling had many supporters. However, there is a significant background of lobbying for the last 20 years on this issue. The death penalty for people with "mental retardation" has been against a United Nations resolution for some time (early 1980's). Amnesty International have been highly involved in a number of specific cases (e.g. John Penry) over the past 20 years. "John Paul Penry, sentenced to death in 1980 for the murder of Pamela Moseley Carpenter, was 13 hours from execution in 1988 when the US Supreme Court agreed to hear his case. The following year, the Court overturned his sentence on the grounds that the rigid format of the Texas capital sentencing scheme had not allowed the trial jury to give effect to the mitigating evidence in the case -- namely Johnny Penry's mental retardation and his childhood of appalling abuse. However, in an accompanying ruling that stood in stark contrast to a United Nations resolution a month earlier opposing the use of the death penalty against the mentally impaired, the Supreme Court found that executing a mentally retarded individual did not per se violate the USA's constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishments. This opened the door for the State of Texas to pursue a second death sentence against John Paul Penry, an opportunity it seized with little or no hesitation. In 1990 he was retried, re-convicted and sent back to death row, where he remains despite lingering doubts as to whether the jurors, like their 1980 predecessors, had been truly able to give their "reasoned moral response" to the mitigating evidence of his mental retardation" Amnesty International (1999). Beyond Reason: The imminent execution of John Paul Penry. United States. Retrieved July 8, 2002 from http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/AMR511951999 Note the case of John Paul Penry, sentenced to death in 1980 for the murder of Pamela Moseley Carpenter, was 13 hours from execution in 1988 when the US Supreme Court agreed to hear his case

 

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