MENTAL ILLNESS: Sally Satel op-ed: ​“The Flawed Case for Executing the Mentally Ill”

In an op-ed for the National Review, psy­chi­a­trist Sally Satel writes, ​“No civ­i­lized or law­ful pur­pose is served by exe­cut­ing the severe­ly men­tal­ly ill.” Satel is a senior fel­low at the American Enterprise Institute, and she high­lights the deficits in the cur­rent legal sys­tem that per­mit cap­i­tal sen­tences and exe­cu­tions for those suf­fer­ing from severe men­tal ill­ness. ​“The require­ments to qual­i­fy for the insan­i­ty defense set the bar so high that few men­tal­ly ill defen­dants can meet it,” she writes. ​“There needs to be a mid­dle ground for men­tal­ly ill defen­dants who do not meet the stan­dards for the insan­i­ty defense but who, because their rea­son­ing is too impaired, can­not be held ful­ly respon­si­ble for their crime. They should face life impris­on­ment or, what would be more com­pas­sion­ate, con­fine­ment for life to a psy­chi­atric facil­i­ty, but not the death penalty.”

Satel cites the case of Andre Thomas, a Texas death-row pris­on­er who has long suf­fered from men­tal ill­ness so acute that he repeat­ed­ly muti­lat­ed him­self and is now blind. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has pro­hib­it­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for those with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty (Atkins v. Virginia, 2002) and exempt­ed those ​“who fail to under­stand the rea­son for their immi­nent demise” (Panetti v. Quarterman, 2007), ​“no court has ever addressed a more fun­da­men­tal mat­ter: the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of some­one as men­tal­ly ill as Thomas, clear­ly psy­chot­ic at the time of the crime, to receive a death sen­tence in the first place,.”

Satel argues that ​“The same judi­cial sen­si­bil­i­ty can and should apply to severe­ly men­tal­ly ill defen­dants,” and she urges state leg­is­la­tures to adopt leg­is­la­tion such as that in Ohio that exempts those with severe men­tal ill­ness from a death sen­tence. She also advo­cates for court action: ​“When an appro­pri­ate case comes before the Supreme Court, it should inter­pret the Eighth Amendment as bar­ring exe­cu­tion of men­tal­ly ill indi­vid­u­als whose com­mit­ment of mur­der was the result of their deranged think­ing. If this were already the law of the land — or of Texas — we would not be look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Andre Thomas might be executed.”