DEATH PENALTY

The Convicted as Victims?
segregation, and using a Taser or 37mm gun without considering the
mental health needs of the prisoners. 13
A special problem with its own ethical dilemma occurs in the treatment
of mental illnesses in death row prisoners. While prisoners who
are mentally incompetent because of, for instance, a psychotic disorder
cannot be executed, this no longer applies if these prisoners are
successfully treated and regain competence. 14
Death row prisoners, who suffer mental illnesses, are—particularly in
combination with the holding conditions on death row and the risk of
insufficient psychiatric treatment—likely to be exposed to ill-treatment.
Intellectually disabled prisoners on death row
There is international consensus that death penalty should not be
imposed on persons with intellectual disability. 15 Intellectual disability
is a disability characterized by significant limitations in both
intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior, which covers many
everyday social and practical skills. This disability originates before
the age of 18. 16 Still, many disputes prevail regarding the operational
assessment of intellectual disability in the context of eligibility for the
death penalty, and there seems to be a need of international standards
in this regard.
Since people with intellectual disability are still executed, 17 it should
be considered whether sentencing such persons to death and holding
them on death row constitutes ill-treatment since they are held under
death row conditions without the ability to fully understand why.
13 http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/DHCS/SMHP_Coleman.html. (accessed on 13 June 2016).
14 Kastrup M. 1988. “Psychiatry and the death penalty.” Journal of Medical Ethics 14:179-83.
15 Allison Freedman. 2014. “Mental Retardation and the Death Penalty: The Need for an International
Standard Defining Mental Retardation.” Northwestern Journal of International Human
Rights 12(1). Available from http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/njihr/vol12/iss1/1.
(accessed on 13 June 2016).
16 American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. Available from http://aaidd.
org/intellectual-disability/definition#.V17o_PNf2Ds. (accessed on 13 June 2016).
17 See for example Kim Bellware, “Georgia Just Executed An Intellectually Disabled Man Whose Sentencing
Was Tainted By Racism,” The Huffington Post, April 12, 2016. Available from http://www.
huffingtonpost.com/entry/kenneth-fults-execution_us_570d65b5e4b0ffa5937d5a6e. (accessed on
17 June 2016).
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