ABA Urges Nevada Supreme Court to Bar Death Penalty for People with Severe Mental Illness

The American Bar Association has urged the Nevada Supreme Court to pro­hib­it the use of the death penal­ty against peo­ple who are severe­ly men­tal­ly ill. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed October 3, 2019 in the case of death-row pris­on­er Siaosi Vanisi, the ABA argued that impos­ing the death penal­ty on peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness serves no legit­i­mate peno­log­i­cal pur­pose and asked the court to ​“cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly pro­hib­it the exe­cu­tion of indi­vid­u­als who were suf­fer­ing from severe men­tal ill­ness at the time of their crimes.” 

Vanisi was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1999. Prior to tri­al, his lawyer raised con­cerns about Vanisi’s men­tal health, advis­ing the court that that the pros­e­cu­tion and defense had ​“received var­i­ous reports regard­ing some bizarre behav­ior” by Vanisi, “[f]rom talk­ing gib­ber­ish to wash­ing him­self in his own urine to danc­ing naked.” The court ordered a com­pe­ten­cy eval­u­a­tion but ruled that Vanisi was com­pe­tent to stand trial. 

After the first tri­al end­ed in a mis­tri­al, Vanisi con­tin­ued to engage in bizarre behav­ior and refused to coop­er­ate with coun­sel. He was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death at his sec­ond tri­al. Two men­tal health experts have since diag­nosed Vanisi with Schizoaffective Disorder ​“that great­ly impairs his cog­ni­tive, emo­tion­al and behav­iour­al con­trol.” His cur­rent lawyers report that his severe men­tal ill­ness has con­tin­ued to cause dif­fi­cul­ties in their attempts to defend him on appeal. 

The ABA ami­cus curi­ae brief argues that exe­cut­ing peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness serves the goals of nei­ther ret­ri­bu­tion nor deter­rence, that peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness are more vul­ner­a­ble to false con­fes­sion and less able to assist coun­sel with their case, and that exist­ing legal pro­tec­tions do not ade­quate­ly address these prob­lems. It says the same rea­sons the U.S. Supreme Court cit­ed for exempt­ing peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties from exe­cu­tion apply equal­ly to per­sons with severe men­tal ill­ness and that “[t]here is no prin­ci­pled basis to treat indi­vid­u­als suf­fer­ing from severe men­tal illness differently.” 

The ABA issued a white paper in 2016 sup­port­ing a death penal­ty exemp­tion for peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness, and it has sup­port­ed leg­isla­tive efforts to enact such an exemp­tion. In the Vanisi brief, the ABA con­cludes that an exemp­tion ​“accounts for the fact that severe men­tal ill­ness jeop­ar­dizes the reli­a­bil­i­ty and fair­ness of cap­i­tal pro­ceed­ings and it rec­og­nizes that the pub­lic has brand­ed exe­cut­ing the severe­ly men­tal­ly ill as wrong.”