This is not really a debate on whether they should be spared the death penalty. Well, OK, it is, sort of. Seems to me that one doesn’t need to be a budding genius to know that killing another human, except in cases of self defense, or protecting your property, is very, very wrong; and I am being quite liberal in my allowances of homicide. So a person is mentally retarded. Does that mean he necessarily has no concept of this. To use this as an excuse to not execute a killer doesn’t seem valid to me, Hopefully, someone can convince me otherwise. A person can be incredibly stupid and still know this is wrong.
It is possible that someone is so mentally retarded that they are incapable of understand the consequences of their actions. I don’t think this necessarily applies to every mentally retarded person. If such a person did murder and was found to be mentally imcompentant I don’t see how you could avoid having them institutionalized for life.
Marc
Many people with developmental disabilities (retarded people) have highly developed moral abilities. Some don’t through the same mechanisms that allow highly intelligent people and ‘normal’ people to be psycopaths also.
However, some people with severe developmental disabilities never develop a moral sense, retaining the moral sense reached by the average young child: ‘what I want is most important, other people don’t matter, my needs must be met’. Similar effects may be caused by brain damage (mainly frontal lobe damage.
A recent execution in the US was of a person who was so morally impaired by his developmental disability that his response to a pschologist profiling his understanding of the death penalty was such that his only interest was ‘Will I get ice-cream after they have executed me?’
This, IMHO, demonstrates that the true moral incompetence was with the state for killing an innocent, no matter what his original crime was.
I worked on the dual diagnoses unit of a state facility for the mentally retarded for 6 years. I can assure you that mental retardation in and of itself is not an impediment to understanding the consequences of one’s actions. True, there were some who could not, but the majority could. I can give you all the examples in the world, if need be.
From this site:
" In 1989, the Supreme Court held that executing persons with mental retardation was not a violation of the Eighth Amendment because a “national consensus” had not developed against executing those with mental retardation"
FWIW, I’m utterly speechless. At least the person with a disability has a reason for not having developed a “moral sense” - I’d be grateful if someone could enlighten me as to the moral justifications of a society for allowing this ?
36 States of the US allow the execution of mentally retarded people. Not surprisingly, no other first world democracy does. I’d be surprised if any other country does. What on earth is going on - Is this any kind of issue in the US ?
They might be retarded, yet are smart enough to figure out how to kill someone.
I say fry the bastards.
Ok, then let’s bring in the death penalty for fourteen year olds, twelve year olds, ten year olds, eight year olds, six year olds who kill. Feel comfortable?
There has to be a limit on responsibility.
Similarly, there are other excuses for killing which are readily accepted due to responsibility being inhibited- automatism, involuntarily drug induced, insanity, mistaken belief. It depends on one of the underlying principles of our legal systems- mens rea- a guilty mind. Since the middle ages, lack of mens rea (which is the usual case with severe developmental disability and children) has been accepted as a valid excuse for not extracting criminal punishment. Of course, the average Anglo-saxon probably had a more advanced moral system then modern folks who want to kill the ‘retarded’.
Just a side issue… if a guy with an IQ of 75 commits a murder, many people say “he isn’t responsible for his actions, he isn’t intelligent enough to know that what he did was wrong, so he shouldn’t be punished.”
Well… suppose a different man with a LOWER IQ… 70, let’s say… performed an act of kindness or even heroism. Would ANYBODY say, “Don’t praise him. Don’t reward him. He’s not intelligent to understand that what he did was brave or noble. He isn’t intelligent enough to grasp what’s right or wrong.”
Are the mentally challenged ONLY responsible for their actions when they do GOOD things?
astorian – one problem of trying retarded people is that they can’t contribute to their own defence in the way you or I would. I can tell you that juries take great account of how a defendant handles him or herself in court, how they explain their accounts of events, how ‘evidence’ can be explained away in other ways than those expounded by the prosecution. Frankly, it’s damn easy for anyone with a little planning to set up a retarded person.
You also have to look at the motivation of a Public Defender under a heavy work load - a Defendent like this needs a lot of time in order for the case to be presented to best advantage - something you’d like to do if death was an option. There are many other issues here relating to ‘equality before the law’.
Pjen]- Been a few years since ‘mens rea’ cropped up in my world - thanks for the memories.
Aside from the legal argument, what surprises me somewhat is how the public - or more exactly the juries - don’t take matters into their own hands.
The comparison I would draw is with the reluctance of the Prosecuting authorities (here) in bringing cases against obvious crimes, but crimes committed where there is a clear moral motive (damage to military aircraft due to be exported to oppressive regimes, damage to genetically modified crops, etc.).
The authorities find it almost impossible to get a “Guilty” verdict out of any jury regardless of overwhelming evidence because the jury won’t condone the current legislation or Government policies: What is called here ‘a perverse verdict’.
That’s what I don’t understand: Juries know that if they convict a retard of a serious crime, the sentence might be death. Are American juries less independently minded or are they all of the same view as Vinnie the Retard Slayer ?
No I would never feel comfortable executing children. HOWEVER- I feel one of the reasons we have so many school shootings is that the media and our culture tends to look at these young killers and instead of portraying them as the evil little pricks that they are, say “Oh look at Darren, he was obviously a troubled mind!”. I call it the “Of Mice and Men Syndrome”.
So, adolescent at home, getting picked on, no parents at home, looking to make a cry for help, walks into school blowing off nuggets into his classmates, because after all, he knows he’s a juvenile, won’t go to jail, will be put in a hospital, be treated like a sympathetic character, then released as an adult. He then gets to live a somewhat normal life while the parents of the victims spend the rest of their lives in mourning.
I think if you fried a couple of these little shits instead, it might knock some sense into some of these would be trigger happy school sprayers. Or at the very least get tough like they did in Florida with that 14 year old punk that shot his teacher. Maybe we need to teach these young Turks a basic tenant of a safe and peaceful society: “THOU SHALT NOT KILL.”
**
I’ll take that last sentence as an off-hand comment directed towards me. I don’t want to kill the retarded. I want to kill the retarded AND people of normal intelligence WHO MURDER.
As for limits, I agree that a three year old kid that pushes his kid sister down the steps and breaks his neck killing him obviously doesn’t know right from wrong. I guess you can make the argument that a retarded adult might have the same mentality, but there’s some major differences:
- A grown adult is much more physically dangerous than a three-year old child. He is a threat to society, and should be removed from it.
- It’s less repugnant to execute an adult than a small child, no matter what their mentality. That “small child” designation while blurred, becomes less and less of an issue as the child get older. You can’t draw a line- you must do it case by case.
- A child pushing another down the steps, well most likely the child didn’t do it to try and kill the other. I can guarantee you that the retarded adult knew he was killing another human being because he was told over and over again by our society that killing is wrong. Anyone that doesn’t understand that by the time they are an adult, well they are a danger to society if they have a violent personality. It’s not like these people are raised by wolves or something.
I don’t feel any mercy is justified if you kill someone while drunk or on drugs. When you introduce chemicals into you system, you are making a choice knowing that the result will be a lack of judgement. Guilty, guilty guilty. Mentally insane? Don’t buy it. I don’t think ANYONE that kills another human being is sane.
**
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I never thought of that Astorian, but wish I did. That’s a great point.
You also have to look at the motivation of a Public Defender under a heavy work load - a Defendent like this needs a lot of time in order for the case to be presented to best advantage - something you’d like to do if death was an option. There are many other issues here relating to ‘equality before the law’.**
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Since the prosecution of mentally challenged defendants is usually a high profile case, I’m sure many of them can get a prominent defense attorney to work for them pro-bono. Therefore, in many of these cases, my guess is that the prosecution is outgunned- a high priced defense attorney versus an underpaid DA. I’m sure that there’s an exception to every rule, but our justice system is not always 100% fair anyway.
Besides, the argument is should someone who is retarded be executed, not “how fair is our justice system”, and a retarded guy getting executed would be just one of many arguments in that debate.
.**
That’s flaming, Chief. That’s cheap rhetoric and I take offense to that. If you want to debate the issues here, let’s debate. If you want to call me names, take it the Pit.
By the way, the word “retard” is not considered acceptable by those who support and work with the mentally challenged, so maybe you might want to back off using that word.
“So many”? >>>sigh<<< Someone else wanna field this one? You do know school violence is decreasing, right?
The irony is staggering. And it’s “tenet.”
This is a specious comparison…the mentally retarded adult has (theoretically) reached the limits of his understanding. The six-year-old child has not.
The fourteen-year-old is questionable, at least in my mind.
In reply to Vinnie and Beelzebubba:
If we admit that there is a level of ‘intelligence’ below which there cannot be blame (children below a certain age), then surely we must admit that other people who fail to reach that level, or fall once again below it should be treated similarly.
To Beelzebubba:
What difference does it make whether a person has reached the zenith of their moral sense or not? Child or childlike, if moral reason is absent, or has been removed, then mens rea does not exist.
To Vinnie:
There are mental states that cause people to lose all contact with reality, and most jurisdictions- even the most regressive in (even) the USA, make some allowance for involuntary mental states that remove responsibility (the guilty mind). I know that an insanity defense is often a clever legal trick, but there are cases where a mental illness or other mental impairment takes away the possibility of blame. Severe developmental disability (retardation) is one of them.
And by the way, calling a person with developmental disability a retard is distasteful, but not nearly as distasteful as your willingness to kill someone who is so disadvantaged mentally that they do not understand right from wrong. Strange ethics you have- don’t call them a retard, but fry them without excuse. Sorry, I side with LondonCalling in his epithets.
Finally, I was talking about involuntary intoxication- spiked drinks and unbeknownst drugs.
To LondonCalling:
The public in the US really believes in the death penalty (and if they don’t, then they are often excluded from the jury); so no perverse verdicts. In Britain, there is a positive reponse to ‘Would you like the death penalty to return?’, but by the sixties it was getting difficult to get a murder conviction except in high profile cases- juries would be offered a lower charge- manslaughter- and would go for that to avoid the responsibility for execution. Even if it were legally possible to return to the death penalty, I suspect that juries would find excuses to avoid it when confronted personally with the case.
I keep on saying to myself: ‘Don’t get involved in these Death Penalty Debates- you only end up getting angry at the intolerance and inhumanity of others- Don’t do it!’ and then I start, and I get such a feeling of righteousness that it even seems worthwhile. Don’t you just enjoy the determination of US death penalty advocates to avoid seeing themselves as the rest of the ‘civilized’ world sees them? Have you seen the UK news today about the woman in Texas with Post-natal depression who tragically killed her five children. Do death penalty advocates realize that European news networks (at least German and English) have been covering it all day by saying:
A woman has tragically killed her children (Translation: this would be tragic anywhere)
She has been arrested for first degree murder and taken to prison and will face trial for this (Translation: most everywhere else there would be an immediate assessment for mental illness before any decision was made on charges)
She faces the death penalty by lethal injection (Translation: just remember how most of us ‘civilized’ countries have ordered things better, leaving the USA to stick to nineteenth century morality and retribution).
I kid you not, that is the way that it has been presented here- as a story about how amusingly and sadly morally deficient the US is- that’s the subtext.
[RANT]Its things like these that cause the rest of the ‘civilized’ world to treat Americans with some suspicion- 'Oh, they’re the people who kill children and the ‘retarded’, and especially kill adults if they’re black, poor or misfits. Welcome to the nineteenth century- lynch law with the benefits of nice medical injections.
Of course, getting people to see how they’re seen by others is always difficult, especially when there is so little feedback of foreign views available.
Don’t you see, the rest of the ‘civilized’ world has really given this up, and you are looked on as deficient in moral standing. It is a blot that cannot be seen except from the outside.[/RANT]
The difference is that the six-year-old is capable of reaching a higher level of understanding, whereas the mentally retarded person is not. The child can be taught and can be introduced into society as a morally “functional” person. The mentally retarded person must be locked away and constantly supervised for the rest of his natural life.
The six year old does not fall below a level of intelligence, he currently falls below a level of development that he can reasonably be expected to achieve. The mentally retarded person falls below this level of development and is not reasonably expected to develop further.
“Moral reason” is permanently absent for one, but not the other. I make the assumption that the courts involved do as much as they can to research the possibility of developing this persons “moral sense” before assigning the death penalty.