Mental Disability and the Death Penalty

Mental Disability and the Death Penalty PDF Author: Michael L. Perlin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442200561
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Michael Perlin shows how the administration of the death penalty deprives persons with mental disabilities of their constitutional rights, and how trial courts and prosecutors consciously flaunt the law. Using real life examples, he brings this often overlooked situation to light and calls for immediate change.

Mental Disability and the Death Penalty

Mental Disability and the Death Penalty PDF Author: Michael L. Perlin, professor emeritus, New York Law School and author of Tangled Up in Law: The Jurisprudence of Bob Dylan, Fordham Urban Law Journal (2011)
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442200588
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Michael Perlin shows how the administration of the death penalty deprives persons with mental disabilities of their constitutional rights, and how trial courts and prosecutors consciously flaunt the law. Using real life examples, he brings this often overlooked situation to light and calls for immediate change.

The Death Penalty and Intellectual Disability

The Death Penalty and Intellectual Disability PDF Author: Edward A. Polloway
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781937604134
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description


Mental Disability and the Death Penalty

Mental Disability and the Death Penalty PDF Author: Michael L. Perlin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442200561
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book

Book Description
Michael Perlin shows how the administration of the death penalty deprives persons with mental disabilities of their constitutional rights, and how trial courts and prosecutors consciously flaunt the law. Using real life examples, he brings this often overlooked situation to light and calls for immediate change.

Deadly Justice

Deadly Justice PDF Author: Frank R. Baumgartner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190841540
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
In 1976, the US Supreme Court ruled in Gregg v. Georgia that the death penalty was constitutional if it complied with certain specific provisions designed to ensure that it was reserved for the 'worst of the worst.' The same court had rejected the death penalty just four years before in the Furman decision because it found that the penalty had been applied in a capricious and arbitrary manner. The 1976 decision ushered in the 'modern' period of the US death penalty, setting the country on a course to execute over 1,400 inmates in the ensuing years, with over 8,000 individuals currently sentenced to die. Now, forty years after the decision, the eminent political scientist Frank Baumgartner along with a team of younger scholars (Marty Davidson, Kaneesha Johnson, Arvind Krishnamurthy, and Colin Wilson) have collaborated to assess the empirical record and provide a definitive account of how the death penalty has been implemented. Each chapter addresses a precise empirical question and provides evidence, not opinion, about whether how the modern death penalty has functioned. They decided to write the book after Justice Breyer issued a dissent in a 2015 death penalty case in which he asked for a full briefing on the constitutionality of the death penalty. In particular, they assess the extent to which the modern death penalty has met the aspirations of Gregg or continues to suffer from the flaws that caused its rejection in Furman. To answer this question, they provide the most comprehensive statistical account yet of the workings of the capital punishment system. Authoritative and pithy, the book is intended for both students in a wide variety of fields, researchers studying the topic, and--not least--the Supreme Court itself.

Beyond Reason

Beyond Reason PDF Author: Human Rights Watch (Organization)
Publisher: Human Rights Watch
ISBN:
Category : Capital punishment
Languages : en
Pages : 51

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Book Description
"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.

A Descending Spiral

A Descending Spiral PDF Author: Marc Bookman
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620976595
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Powerful, wry essays offering modern takes on a primitive practice, from one of our most widely read death penalty abolitionists As Ruth Bader Ginsburg has noted, people who are well represented at trial rarely get the death penalty. But as Marc Bookman shows in a dozen brilliant essays, the problems with capital punishment run far deeper than just bad representation. Exploring prosecutorial misconduct, racist judges and jurors, drunken lawyering, and executing the innocent and the mentally ill, these essays demonstrate that precious few people on trial for their lives get the fair trial the Constitution demands. Today, death penalty cases continue to capture the hearts, minds, and eblasts of progressives of all stripes—including the rich and famous (see Kim Kardashian’s advocacy)—but few people with firsthand knowledge of America’s “injustice system” have the literary chops to bring death penalty stories to life. Enter Marc Bookman. With a voice that is both literary and journalistic, the veteran capital defense lawyer and seven-time Best American Essays “notable” author exposes the dark absurdities and fatal inanities that undermine the logic of the death penalty wherever it still exists. In essays that cover seemingly “ordinary” capital cases over the last thirty years, Bookman shows how violent crime brings out our worst human instincts—revenge, fear, retribution, and prejudice. Combining these emotions with the criminal legal system’s weaknesses—purposely ineffective, arbitrary, or widely infected with racism and misogyny—is a recipe for injustice. Bookman has been charming and educating readers in the pages of The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and Slate for years. His wit and wisdom are now collected and preserved in A Descending Spiral.

Forensic Mental Health Assessments in Death Penalty Cases

Forensic Mental Health Assessments in Death Penalty Cases PDF Author: David DeMatteo
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0195385802
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
This text provides an essential road map to forensic mental health assessments in death penalty cases for students and practitioners. The book integrates research with best practice recommendations, yielding a solid foundation of information related to capital punishment, death penalty litigation, and more.

Right Here, Right Now

Right Here, Right Now PDF Author: Lynden Harris
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 147802142X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
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.

Intellectual Disability and the Death Penalty

Intellectual Disability and the Death Penalty PDF Author: Marc J. Tassé Ph.D.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440840156
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Written by two nationally recognized experts, this book provides a comprehensive review of the legal and clinical aspects of the death penalty as it relates to intellectual disability. First, the facts: people with intellectual disability may falsely confess to a crime because they want to please the authorities, and they are often less able than others to work with lawyers to prepare a defense. In addition, because of the stigma attached to intellectual disability, affected individuals often become adept at hiding it, even from their attorney, not understanding the condition's importance to the outcome of their case. Having explained such harsh realities and presented a comprehensive review of what intellectual disability is, the book focuses on the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court Atkins v. Virginia decision granting a death penalty exemption to individuals with intellectual disability. It outlines best practice regarding the determination of intellectual disability and discusses qualifications needed for experts in such cases. Related issues such as common misconceptions regarding people with intellectual disability, race, socioeconomic status, and the status of foreign nationals as it relates to the death penalty and intellectual disability are discussed as well. A must-have resource for prosecutors, defense lawyers, and clinicians providing expert testimony in death penalty cases, this book will also prove absorbing reading for anyone concerned about this troubling issue.

Executing the Mentally Ill

Executing the Mentally Ill PDF Author: Kent S. Miller
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1452254222
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
This book is an excellent primer on a subject that Americans are likely to debate for the foreseeable future. --Bimonthly Review of Law Books Unlike every other western democracy in the world, capital punishment is an active part of the criminal justice system in the United States. By the end of 1992, 2,700 men and 41 women were living under the sentence of death in America. Executing the Mentally Ill examines the compelling case of Florida death-row inmate Alvin Ford, which led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that executions of severely psychotic death-row inmates are in violation of the Eighth Amendment′s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. But how should mental illness be defined for purposes of exemption from execution? How should mental health professionals evaluate competence for execution? What happens when the professionals disagree among themselves about the defendant′s mental health? How strong should doubts about mental status be before the execution is stopped? And what should be done with the prisoner who is found incompetent? In telling the powerful story of Ford′s history, crime, mental state, and how he was handled by the criminal justice system, the authors confront questions about modern capital sentencing and the administration of the death penalty in America today. Executing the Mentally Ill provides a thought-provoking read for students and professionals in mental health, criminal justice, and legal fields, as well as policymakers and others concerned with capital punishment. "Those seeking a clearer context for the ambiguities and dilemmas that characterize the ongoing debate over exemption of the mentally ill from execution will find valuable historical and cross-cultural references here. The case of Alvin Ford provides a new perspective for measuring the gaps between the vagueness of the criteria used by mental health professionals in determining competence and its various legal definitions. . . . An underlying message for the reader is that questioning whether mentally ill or mentally retarded death-row inmates should be executed implies questioning the use of the death penalty for anyone." --Readings: A Journal of Reviews and Commentary in Mental Health "The case of Alvin Ford, a Florida man convicted of killing a police officer during a bungled armed robbery, provides a specific focus for Miller and Radelet′s wide-ranging discussion of mental illness and the death penalty. . . . Miller is a psychologist and longstanding student of mental disability issues; Radelet is a leading contemporary authority on the death penalty. Their combined expertise provides readers with a thorough exploration of the "competence to die" issue, and they also touch on other death penalty issues such as proportionality and racial bias. . . . This book cannot, of course, decisively resolve all the issues involved in the death penalty debate, but it is a worthwhile contribution to the literature. Advanced undergraduates and above." --Choice "The life of Alvin Ford and his 17-year odyssey through Florida′s complex capital-punishment process is the subject of Executing the Mentally Ill. In telling this fascinating and often macabre story, professors Miller and Radelet expose an inherent and often ignored moral dilemma with capital punishment. The book provides compelling empirical support for the dictum that ′though the justice of God may indeed ordain that some should die, the justice of man is altogether and always insufficient for saying who these may be′ (Black, 1974, p. 96). The authors also use the Ford case to examine other important issues about the death penalty in the United States including racism and ineffective assistance of counsel. This well-documented volume should appeal both to an academic audience and to the general public." --Robert M. Bohm, Ph.D., University of North Carolina "Over the last five years, I have reviewed about a dozen books, mostly for university presses, and found this particular piece to be the most well-written and well-researched document to date. The scholarship is sound and ′workmanlike.′ I was impressed with the authors′ scholarship and ability to apply a wide range of data (e.g. psychiatric testimony, appellate decisions, interviews, and personal letters) to a critical social issue that will continue to haunt our society: the execution of the mentally ill offender. This book makes a very important contribution to the literature in psychology and the law. The book could be used as a supplementary text in criminal justice programs, sociology, psychology, law, and public policy. This book should be read by every appellate-level judge, felony district-court judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney in America. It leads the way in clarifying the practical, moral, and ethical issues. Legislators should also read this account." --James W. Marquart, Ph.D., Sam Houston State University "It is an important book, addressing an area that has only recently become the focus of much attention for mental health professionals. Miller and Radelet have undertaken a comprehensive and carefully articulated look at the issue of competency for execution and the way in which it affects mental health professionals, interwoven as it is with the politics of capital punishment." --Kirk Heilbrun, Ph.D., Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Substance Abuse Services, Central State Hospital, Virginia