Today's Supreme Court ruling that executing offenders with mental retardation is unconstitutional should end an American practice criticized around the world as barbaric, Human Rights Watch said today.
The United States has been almost alone internationally in failing to recognize the senseless cruelty of executing the mentally retarded," said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch. "Even supporters of the death penalty recognize that people with lifelong mental impairments do not belong on death row."
The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Daryl Atkins, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1996 robbery and murder of Eric Nesbitt. Atkins is reported to have an overall IQ of 59. An I.Q. below 70 is considered a major indicator of diminished intellectual functioning consistent with mental retardation.
In a majority opinion written by Justice Stevens, the Court concluded that the practice of executing offenders with mental retardation "has become unusual, and it is fair to say that a national consensus has developed against it. This consensus unquestionably reflects widespread judgment about the relative culpability of mentally retarded offenders, and the relationship between mental retardation and the penological purposes served by the death penalty." In 1989, when the court upheld the constitutionality of executing mentally retarded offenders, only two states prohibited such executions of those with mental retardation.
The Supreme Court's 6-3 decision may spare hundreds from execution. There are 2,455 persons currently under death sentence in the twenty states whose laws permit the execution of the mental retarded; an estimated five percent may be mentally retarded.
Over the past decade and a half, efforts to ban the execution of the mentally retarded have led to legislation in eighteen states and the federal government prohibiting such executions. Another twelve states do not permit capital punishment in any circumstances. There are 3,701 persons currently on death row across the United States.
Human Rights Watch, which opposes capital punishment in all cases as inherently cruel and a violation of fundamental human dignity, said the death penalty is particularly unconscionable for offenders whose cognitive development has been limited by mental retardation.
Human Rights Watch's 2001 report, "Beyond Reason: The Death Penalty and Offenders with Mental Retardation," described how the mentally retarded have lifelong limited abilities to reason, think, learn from experience and understand causality.
"Although they can commit terrible crimes, by virtue of their disability, they should never be considered among the most culpable offenders for whom, in the United States, the death penalty is ostensibly reserved," said Fellner.
Those with mental retardation are also particularly at risk of a miscarriage of justice in their capital prosecutions. As documented in Beyond Reason, their disability makes it hard for them to comprehend abstract legal concepts and their unreliable memories and suggestibility impede their ability to assist in their defense. Being characteristically eager to please authority, many detainees with mental retardation waive their rights to remain silent and even make false confessions.
The U.N. Commission on Human Rights has urged countries that retain the death penalty to refrain from imposing it on people with mental retardation. On April 25, 2002, the Commission issued a resolution, urging those states that have capital punishment not to impose it on persons suffering from any kind of "mental disorder," which includes mental retardation. In 1998, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions criticized the United States for executing the mentally retarded in contravention of international standards and in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States has ratified.
