NEW VOICES: Bipartisan Former Governors Support Death Penalty Exemption for Those With Severe Mental Illness

In a joint op-ed for The Washington Post, for­mer gov­er­nors Bob Taft (pic­tured, l.) and Joseph E. Kernan (pic­tured, r.) have expressed bipar­ti­san sup­port for pro­posed leg­is­la­tion that would pro­hib­it the use of the death penal­ty against peo­ple who have severe men­tal ill­ness. Taft, a for­mer Republican gov­er­nor of Ohio, and Kernan, a for­mer Democratic gov­er­nor of Indiana, call the exe­cu­tion of men­tal­ly ill defen­dants ​“an inhu­mane prac­tice that fails to respect com­mon stan­dards of decen­cy and com­port with rec­om­men­da­tions of men­tal-health experts.” They high­light recent exe­cu­tions of Adam Ward, who exhib­it­ed symp­toms of men­tal ill­ness by the age of four, and dec­o­rat­ed Vietnam War vet­er­an Andrew Brannan, whom the Department of Veterans Affairs clas­si­fied as 100% dis­abled as a result of his com­bat-relat­ed post­trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and bipo­lar dis­or­der, as exam­ples of severe­ly men­tal­ly ill defen­dants who ​“con­tin­ue to be sen­tenced to death and exe­cut­ed” in the United States. Legislators in Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia have intro­duced leg­is­la­tion in 2017 that would pro­hib­it the death penal­ty for peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness, argu­ing that these defen­dants are less cul­pa­ble, more vul­ner­a­ble to wrong­ful con­vic­tion, and often false­ly per­ceived by jurors as more dan­ger­ous. Taft and Kernan explain that ​“Legislation being con­sid­ered on this top­ic varies by state, but each bill cre­ates a case-by-case deci­sion-mak­ing process — con­duct­ed by either a judge or jury — to deter­mine if a defen­dant has a severe men­tal ill­ness. Only those with the most seri­ous diag­noses would qual­i­fy.” They urge leg­is­la­tures to pass these mea­sures, say­ing, ​“This is a fair, effi­cient and bipar­ti­san reform that would put an end to a prac­tice that is not con­sis­tent with cur­rent knowl­edge about men­tal ill­ness and fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of human decency.”

(B. Taft and J. Kernan, ​“End the death penal­ty for men­tal­ly ill crim­i­nals,” The Washington Post, March 24, 2017.) See New Voices, Mental Illness, and Recent Legislative Activity.