The American Bar Association passed a res­o­lu­tion on August 8 at its annu­al con­fer­ence rec­om­mend­ing that juris­dic­tions refrain from sen­tenc­ing to death or exe­cut­ing indi­vid­u­als with severe men­tal dis­or­ders. Using lan­guage adopt­ed ear­li­er by the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association, the res­o­lu­tion assert­ed that defen­dants should not be exe­cut­ed or sen­tenced to death if, at the time of the offense, they had ​“sig­nif­i­cant lim­i­ta­tions in both their intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing and adap­tive behav­ior,” or had ​“a severe men­tal dis­or­der or dis­abil­i­ty that sig­nif­i­cant­ly impaired their capac­i­ty (a) to appre­ci­ate the nature, con­se­quences or wrong­ful­ness of their con­duct, (b) to exer­cise ratio­nal judg­ment in rela­tion to con­duct, or (c) to con­form their con­duct to the require­ments of the law.”

The ABA’s res­o­lu­tion would also exempt those whose onset of men­tal dis­or­der or dis­abil­i­ty occurs after sen­tenc­ing. According to the res­o­lu­tion, a sen­tence of death should not be car­ried out if the pris­on­er has a men­tal dis­or­der or dis­abil­i­ty that sig­nif­i­cant­ly impairs his or her capacity:

  • to make a ratio­nal deci­sion to for­go or ter­mi­nate post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings avail­able to chal­lenge the valid­i­ty of the con­vic­tion or sentence; 
  • to under­stand or com­mu­ni­cate per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion, or oth­er­wise assist coun­sel, in rela­tion to spe­cif­ic claims bear­ing on the valid­i­ty of the con­vic­tion or sen­tence that can­not be fair­ly resolved with­out the pris­on­er’s par­tic­i­pa­tion; or 
  • to under­stand the nature and pur­pose of the pun­ish­ment, or to appre­ci­ate the rea­son for its impo­si­tion in the pris­on­er’s own case.

(See ABA Resolution 122A and accom­pa­ny­ing report , August 8, 2006). See also Mental Illness.

Citation Guide