Mentally Disabled Shouldn't Receive Death Penalty, Says UF Professor

December 5, 2000

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Defendants with mental disabilities should not be sentenced to death, a practice 38 states still allow, according to a University of Florida professor of law and psychiatry.

In an article published in the California Law Review, Christopher Slobogin, a professor in the Fredric G. Levin College of Law, presents several reasons why he believes the execution of people with mental illness or mental retardation is illegal.

“It’s a violation of due process of law for a state not to follow its own laws,” Slobogin said. “Every capital sentencing statute in the country says that mental retardation and mental illness should be treated as a mitigating circumstance. But research strongly suggests that mental disorder generally is treated as an aggravating circumstance by capital sentencing juries.”

Slobogin’s argument is particularly timely, as the U.S. Supreme Court agreed last week to hear, for the second time, the case of Johnny Paul Penry, a mentally retarded Texas man condemned to death for the rape and murder of 22-year-old Pamela Moseley Carpenter. His first conviction was overturned in 1988, when the court ruled that his rights had been violated because the jury was not properly allowed to consider his mental capacity.

At the same time, however, the court made a landmark ruling — still one of the primary rulings cited in connection with mental disability — stating that the Constitution allows the execution of mentally retarded killers.

This time, lawyers for Penry, now 44, are arguing that his constitutional protection against compelled self-incrimination was violated when prosecutors used the results of a psychiatric exam for an unrelated crime to help convict Penry of the murder.

Twelve states and the federal government now prohibit the execution of mentally retarded defendants, and Slobogin says more states should join their ranks. Mentally ill defendants — such as those who are delusional or schizophrenic — also should be protected from the death penalty, he argues.

“If we are going to prohibit the execution of children, which all states do, and of people with mental retardation, which 13 jurisdictions do, we should also prohibit the execution of the mentally ill,” he said. “There is absolutely no legally relevant difference between the three groups.”

Slobogin also argued that the execution of the mentally disabled often violates the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, including execution of those found to be incompetent.

“People with serious mental disabilities often don’t understand what the death penalty is all about,” he said. “Assuming it’s ever permissible to execute seriously ill people, courts need to pay much more attention to their grasp of the situation before authorizing their execution. Trying to make defendants competent through forcible medication puts mental health professionals in an untenable ethical situation, which I also argue is cruel and unusual.”

Slobogin’s article was published in February.

A UF department of psychiatry affiliate professor since 1995 and a UF law school professor since 1982, Slobogin has also taught for the University of South Florida’s department of mental health since 1986 and has been a visiting faculty member at four universities worldwide.