Mental Disability and the Death Penalty

Mental Disability and the Death Penalty
Author: Michael L. Perlin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2013-01-17
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1442200588

There is no question that the death penalty is disproportionately imposed in cases involving defendants with mental disabilities. There is clear, systemic bias at all stages of the prosecution and the sentencing process – in determining who is competent to be executed, in the assessment of mitigation evidence, in the ways that counsel is assigned, in the ways that jury determinations are often contaminated by stereotyped preconceptions of persons with mental disabilities, in the ways that cynical expert testimony reflects a propensity on the part of some experts to purposely distort their testimony in order to achieve desired ends. These questions are shockingly ignored at all levels of the criminal justice system, and by society in general. Here, Michael Perlin explores the relationship between mental disabilities and the death penalty and explains why and how this state of affairs has come to be, to explore why it is necessary to identify the factors that have contributed to this scandalous and shameful policy morass, to highlight the series of policy choices that need immediate remediation, and to offer some suggestions that might meaningfully ameliorate the situation. Using real cases to illustrate the ways in which the persons with mental disabilities are unable to receive fair treatment during death penalty trials, he demonstrates the depth of the problem and the way it’s been institutionalized so as to be an accepted part of our system. He calls for a new approach, and greater attention to the issues that have gone overlooked for so long.

Arbitrary Death

Arbitrary Death
Author: Rick Unklesbay
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2019-05-10
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1627876812

Over a career spanning nearly four decades, Rick Unklesbay has tried over one hundred murder cases before juries that ended with sixteen men and women receiving the death sentence. Arbitrary Death depicts some of the most horrific murders in Tucson, Arizona, the author's prosecution of those cases, and how the death penalty was applied. It provides the framework to answer the questions: Why is America the only Western country to still use the death penalty? Can a human-run system treat those cases fairly and avoid unconstitutional arbitrariness? It is an insider's view from someone who has spent decades prosecuting murder cases and who now argues that the death penalty doesn't work and our system is fundamentally flawed. With a rational, balanced approach, Unklesbay depicts cases that represent how different parts of the criminal justice system are responsible for the arbitrary nature of the death penalty and work against the fair application of the law. The prosecution, trial courts, juries, and appellate courts all play a part in what ultimately is a roll of the dice as to whether a defendant lives or dies. Arbitrary Death is for anyone who wonders why and when its government seeks to legally take the life of one of its citizens. It will have you questioning whether you can support a system that applies death as an arbitrary punishment -- and often decades after the sentence was given.

Right Here, Right Now

Right Here, Right Now
Author: Lynden Harris
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2021-03-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 147802142X

Upon receiving his execution date, one of the thousands of men living on death row in the United States had an epiphany: “All there ever is, is this moment. You, me, all of us, right here, right now, this minute, that's love.” Right Here, Right Now collects the powerful, first-person stories of dozens of men on death rows across the country. From childhood experiences living with poverty, hunger, and violence to mental illness and police misconduct to coming to terms with their executions, these men outline their struggle to maintain their connection to society and sustain the humanity that incarceration and its daily insults attempt to extinguish. By offering their hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, failures, and wounds, the men challenge us to reconsider whether our current justice system offers actual justice or simply perpetuates the social injustices that obscure our shared humanity.

Deadly Justice

Deadly Justice
Author: Frank R. Baumgartner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2018
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0190841540

Forty years and 1,400 executions after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty constitutional, eminent political scientist Frank Baumgartner and a team of younger scholars have collaborated to assess the empirical record and provide a definitive account of how the death penalty has been implemented. A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty shows that all the flaws that caused the Supreme Court to invalidate the death penalty in 1972 remain and indeed that new problems have arisen. Far from "perfecting the mechanism" of death, the modern system has failed.

Beyond Reason

Beyond Reason
Author: Human Rights Watch (Organization)
Publisher: Human Rights Watch
Total Pages: 51
Release: 2001
Genre: Capital punishment
ISBN:

"Beyond Reason: The Death Penalty and Offenders with Mental Retardation" is a March 2001 document of Human Rights Watch that focuses on the execution of people with mental retardation in the United States. Human Rights Watch notes that 25 U.S. states permit capital punishment for offenders who are mentally retarded. The agency recommends that until capital punishment is completely abolished in the United States, offenders with mental retardation should be exempted from a sentence of death or execution.

Let the Lord Sort Them

Let the Lord Sort Them
Author: Maurice Chammah
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2021-01-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1524760277

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A deeply reported, searingly honest portrait of the death penalty in Texas—and what it tells us about crime and punishment in America “If you’re one of those people who despair that nothing changes, and dream that something can, this is a story of how it does.”—Anand Giridharadas, The New York Times Book Review WINNER OF THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS AWARD In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: the country’s death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier. When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment. Then, amid a larger wave of criminal justice reform, came the death penalty’s decline, a trend so durable that even in Texas the punishment appears again close to extinction. In Let the Lord Sort Them, Maurice Chammah charts the rise and fall of capital punishment through the eyes of those it touched. We meet Elsa Alcala, the orphaned daughter of a Mexican American family who found her calling as a prosecutor in the nation’s death penalty capital, before becoming a judge on the state’s highest court. We meet Danalynn Recer, a lawyer who became obsessively devoted to unearthing the life stories of men who committed terrible crimes, and fought for mercy in courtrooms across the state. We meet death row prisoners—many of them once-famous figures like Henry Lee Lucas, Gary Graham, and Karla Faye Tucker—along with their families and the families of their victims. And we meet the executioners, who struggle openly with what society has asked them to do. In tracing these interconnected lives against the rise of mass incarceration in Texas and the country as a whole, Chammah explores what the persistence of the death penalty tells us about forgiveness and retribution, fairness and justice, history and myth. Written with intimacy and grace, Let the Lord Sort Them is the definitive portrait of a particularly American institution.

End of Its Rope

End of Its Rope
Author: Brandon Garrett
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2017-09-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674970993

An awakening -- Inevitability of innocence -- Mercy vs. justice -- The great American death penalty decline -- The defense lawyering effect -- Murder insurance -- The other death penalty -- The execution decline -- End game -- The triumph of mercy

Peculiar Institution

Peculiar Institution
Author: David Garland
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2011-02-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674058488

The U.S. death penalty is a peculiar institution, and a uniquely American one. Despite its comprehensive abolition elsewhere in the Western world, capital punishment continues in dozens of American states– a fact that is frequently discussed but rarely understood. The same puzzlement surrounds the peculiar form that American capital punishment now takes, with its uneven application, its seemingly endless delays, and the uncertainty of its ever being carried out in individual cases, none of which seem conducive to effective crime control or criminal justice. In a brilliantly provocative study, David Garland explains this tenacity and shows how death penalty practice has come to bear the distinctive hallmarks of America’s political institutions and cultural conflicts. America’s radical federalism and local democracy, as well as its legacy of violence and racism, account for our divergence from the rest of the West. Whereas the elites of other nations were able to impose nationwide abolition from above despite public objections, American elites are unable– and unwilling– to end a punishment that has the support of local majorities and a storied place in popular culture. In the course of hundreds of decisions, federal courts sought to rationalize and civilize an institution that too often resembled a lynching, producing layers of legal process but also delays and reversals. Yet the Supreme Court insists that the issue is to be decided by local political actors and public opinion. So the death penalty continues to respond to popular will, enhancing the power of criminal justice professionals, providing drama for the media, and bringing pleasure to a public audience who consumes its chilling tales. Garland brings a new clarity to our understanding of this peculiar institution– and a new challenge to supporters and opponents alike.

Race and the Death Penalty

Race and the Death Penalty
Author: David P. Keys
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2016
Genre: African American criminals
ISBN: 9781626373563

In what has been called the Dred Scott decision of our times, the US Supreme Court found in McCleskey v. Kemp that evidence of overwhelming racial disparities in the capital punishment process could not be admitted in individual capital cases, in effect institutionalizing a racially unequal system of criminal justice. Exploring the enduring legacy of this radical decision nearly three decades later, the authors of Race and the Death Penalty examine the persistence of racial discrimination in the practice of capital punishment, the dynamics that drive it, and the human consequences of both. David P. Keys is associate professor of criminal justice at New Mexico State University. R.J. Maratea is assistant professor of criminal justice at New Mexico State University.