Mental Illness and the Death Penalty

The execution of Charles Singleton in Arkansas last January 6 marked another shameful episode in the saga of capital punishment in the United States. The case was not remarkable because Mr. Singleton was an African American defendant sentenced to die by an all-white jury. All-white juries are a commonplace feature of America's death penalty system. Even in New York, one of four men on death row (Nicholson McCoy) is a black man condemned to die by an all-white jury. Rather, what catapulted Mr. Singleton's case into national news was the fact that his schizophrenia had worsened to such a degree that he no longer understood what it meant to be executed. It doesn't take much to be judged competent for execution: you just have to understand what an execution is and why it's being done to you. But Mr. Singleton was completely out of it, living in a delusional world. He didn't meet the law's minimal standard of competence, meaning that the state of Arkansas could not legally execute him.

But the keepers of the justice system in Arkansas found a way around this problem. They proposed giving psychotropic medication to Mr. Singleton to quell his delusions. If Mr. Singleton could be made to understand his circumstances, the state reasoned, he'd meet the legal standard for competence and then the execution could proceed.

Of course, the defendant's lawyer objected. Isn't medicine supposed to heal people? Isn't it absurd to heal people for the sole purpose of killing them? On the other hand, without medication, Singleton's mental illness left him besieged with hellish delusions. The state insisted that he be forcibly medicated, not from any kindness, but to make him eligible for execution.

The issue was litigated to the eighth circuit federal court in Missouri. Often we look to the federal court system for sanity in the law. However, a panel of federal court judges ruled that the state of Arkansas' interest in carrying out the death sentence outweighed Mr. Singleton's interest in avoiding what it termed "the negative side effects of the medication." The US Supreme Court declined to hear the case on appeal, thus paving the way for Mr. Singleton to receive the psychiatric treatment that led to his execution by lethal injection.

(If only the prison system were as strongly motivated to provide effective treatment to the estimated 16% of state prison inmates suffering from serious mental illness!)

Now, an interesting question is whether Mr. Singleton's case would have ended differently in New York than in did in Arkansas. There is nothing in New York's death penalty statute that would bar execution, let alone the imposition of a death sentence for someone who is seriously mentally ill. New York's definition of legal competence is no different than Arkansas'. New York juries have rendered guilty verdicts against obviously mentally ill defendants (Ralph Tortoricci and Christine Wilhelm come to mind), resulting in long prisons sentences instead of treatment in secure mental health facilities. In the case of Mr. Totoricci, his guilty verdict and forty-year prison sentence were upheld by the New York State Court of Appeals, the same court that handles the state's death row appeals. Perhaps it should be pointed out that Mr. Tortoricci never served his full sentence. Denied appropriate treatment in state prison for his mental illness, he committed suicide after just two years of incarceration.

Lest anyone suppose that the mishandling of Mr. Totoricci by the Department of Corrections is an anomaly in New York, note the scandalous use of SHU's (segregated housing units), whereby severely mentally ill inmates are placed in solitary confinement and denied effective treatment for their illnesses. This practice has been condemned by the Mental Health Association and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), yet continues unimpeded by morality or common sense. Given New York's willingness to execute the mentally ill, the abuse and mistreatment of mentally ill inmates ought not to surprise us. A willingness to kill generally obliterates any nicer refinements in the appreciation of human dignity.

In late April, the Court of Appeals heard arguments in the case Stephen LaValle, a death row inmate from Suffolk County who'd vetoed any presentation of mitigating evidence during his capital trial. The jury, having already convicted Mr. LaValle of first degree murder, was asked during the trial's penalty phase to weigh aggravating factors (the brutal rape and murder of a popular teacher) against any mitigating factors that the defense cared to present. Mr. LaValle's attorneys possessed ample documentation that he'd suffered a terrible childhood, including sexual abuse; that he had attempted suicide; that there had been a psychiatric hospitalization; that he'd been bingeing on crack cocaine the night of the murder. But the jury heard none of it because Mr. LaValle didn't want his painful family history aired in public. In response to a question from Chief Judge Judith Kaye, Assistant Attorney General Luke Martland argued that Mr. LaValle's constitutional right of self-representation "trumped" the state's interest in making sure that its death sentences are appropriate and fair.

The adversarial set-up of the legal system assumes a more or less rational grasp of self-interest on the defendant's part - an assumption that may fly out the window when the defendant is mentally ill. Although people with severe mental illnesses may have less culpability for behavior rooted in uncontrollable delusions, they are far more likely to give false confessions, to be unable to cooperate with defense attorneys, and to mistake their self-interest when making crucial decisions at trial. Yet there are no special provisions in New York's death penalty law designed to protect the mentally ill. In other death penalty states, people with severe mental illnesses (such as schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder) are regularly put to death under laws very similar to the law in New York.

Charles Singleton could have been executed in New York. Stephen LaValle may yet be. There are many reasons to oppose the death penalty. Laws that allow the execution of the mentally ill (like New York's death penalty statute) are certainly cruel, if not unusual.