New Podcast: American Enterprise Institute’s Dr. Sally Satel Explains Why People with Severe Mental Illness Should Not Be Eligible for the Death Penalty

In the lat­est episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, inter­views Dr. Sally Satel (pic­tured), a psy­chi­a­trist and senior fel­low at the American Enterprise Institute. She shares her insights on the role of severe men­tal ill­ness in death penalty cases. 

Dr. Satel dis­cuss­es the rea­sons that per­mit death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions for indi­vid­u­als with severe men­tal ill­ness, which she wrote about in an op-ed for the National Review. ​“I don’t think it’s civ­i­lized to blame some­one and pun­ish [them] because they did not have a ratio­nal knowl­edge of that wrong­do­ing. [They] did not appre­ci­ate the sig­nif­i­cance or con­se­quences of it.” 

Dr. Satel also focus­es on Andre Thomas, a Texas death-row pris­on­er who has long suf­fered from severe men­tal ill­ness. ​“I think there is some mer­it to the con­cept of ret­ri­bu­tion. But it’s invalid in a case like his because he was not ratio­nal. His capac­i­ty for moral log­ic was dis­tort­ed. So if you’re not ratio­nal, then you’re not as blame­wor­thy or as cul­pa­ble as you might oth­er­wise be…there should be dimin­ished or no pun­ish­ment. His case would not real­ly meet the require­ments of the eth­ic of retribution.” 

During the inter­view, Dr. Satel expounds on the com­plex­i­ties of men­tal ill­ness which affect the cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing of defen­dants and may increase the risk of being sen­tenced to death. She explains that a juror’s bias towards peo­ple who have men­tal ill­ness and their over­all lack of under­stand­ing of men­tal ill­ness influ­ence mis­con­cep­tions about the defen­dant dur­ing tri­al. ​“By the time they do see the defen­dant, [they] have been prob­a­bly med­icat­ed. So they can actu­al­ly appear quite ratio­nal. And so the idea is that this per­son kind of does not fit the image of a psy­chot­ic indi­vid­ual who com­mit­ted mur­der. The med­ica­tions have side effects. You can also have a sit­u­a­tion where the per­son is often over­med­icat­ed. So they look very flat. Their eyes can be all over the court­room, not real­ly pay­ing attention…and to the jury that can look like they’re not tak­ing this seriously.” 

Dr. Satel also empha­sizes the need for legal reform and her approval of recent Ohio leg­is­la­tion which pro­hibits impos­ing the death penal­ty on indi­vid­u­als with severe men­tal ill­ness. Dr. Satel stat­ed, ​“I think the Ohio bill is excellent…and it was passed with sig­nif­i­cant bipar­ti­san sup­port which is very encouraging.” 

You can lis­ten to the pod­cast here.