NEW VOICES: Former Florida Prison Psychiatrist Criticizes the Execution of Mentally Ill Prisoners

Dr. Joseph Thornton, a psy­chi­a­trist who for­mer­ly treat­ed death row pris­on­ers as the med­ical direc­tor of a Florida max­i­mum secu­ri­ty prison, called for an end to the death penal­ty for those with severe men­tal ill­ness: ​“We should not be exe­cut­ing any­one, let alone the sick and the bro­ken,” he said. ​“As some­one with over 40 years’ expe­ri­ence see­ing patients with seri­ous men­tal ill­ness who are stig­ma­tized, ostra­cized and blamed for their symp­toms, I believe that recov­ery care, not ostra­ciza­tion, respects life and saves lives.”

In an op-ed in the Florida Times Union, Thornton used the case of Donald Dillbeck, who suf­fered from fetal alco­hol spec­trum dis­or­der, men­tal health issues, and brain abnor­mal­i­ties, to illus­trate the fail­ures of the cur­rent sys­tem. ​“In Dillbeck’s case, once on death row, he got clean and sober, devel­oped mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships with friends on the out­side and found prayer and med­i­ta­tion as a way to cope. He had no vio­lent inci­dents in the last three decades. Killing him did not make us any safer,” explained Thornton.

More broad­ly, Thornton argued that ​“Death penal­ty exe­cu­tions are a unique form of homi­cide. The state kills not for self-defense, not for deter­rence, not for jus­tice, but for pure ret­ri­bu­tion. We must not accept this and we must tell our leg­is­la­tors to say, ​“not in my name may you kill.”

Rather than the death penal­ty, which is ​“not nec­es­sary to pro­tect soci­ety,” Thornton said he believes that more should be invest­ed in ​“ser­vices for fam­i­ly sup­port and men­tal health treat­ment” in order to pro­tect the vic­tims of child abuse. He also not­ed that ​“Veterans with uncon­trolled PTSD are espe­cial­ly over­rep­re­sent­ed on Florida’s death row.”