Ohio Prisoner David Braden Becomes First Person Taken Off Death Row Under New Mental Illness Law

An Ohio tri­al court has resen­tenced death-row pris­on­er David Braden (pic­tured) to life with­out parole, mak­ing him the first per­son in the nation tak­en off death row by a state law bar­ring cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for peo­ple with severe mental illness.

On June 23, 2021, Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Colleen O’Donnell for­mal­ly vacat­ed the two death sen­tences imposed on Braden in June 1999 for the mur­ders of his girl­friend and her father and sen­tenced him to life with­out parole on both counts. Her rul­ing was the first time any court had applied Ohio’s new law — enact­ed in January 2021 — to remove a pris­on­er from death row. 

Although bills have been intro­duced in the leg­is­la­tures of a dozen states in the past decade to pro­hib­it the use of the death penal­ty against those with severe men­tal ill­ness, Ohio is the first to have enact­ed such a pro­hi­bi­tion. Ohio bans the death penal­ty for peo­ple who, at the time of their offense, had a seri­ous men­tal ill­ness that ​“sig­nif­i­cant­ly impaired the person’s capac­i­ty to exer­cise ratio­nal judg­ment in rela­tion to [his or her] con­duct” with respect to either ​“con­form­ing the person’s con­duct to the require­ments of law” or in ​“appre­ci­at­ing the nature, con­se­quences, or wrong­ful­ness of [his or her] conduct.”

Braden’s lawyers filed a peti­tion invok­ing the new law on June 16. The peti­tion includ­ed state­ments from Dr. Kathleen Burch, who diag­nosed Braden with ​“para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia with delu­sions,” as well as from friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers who recount­ed Braden’s esca­lat­ing symp­toms in the months pri­or to the mur­ders. Braden’s broth­er and sis­ter-in-law report­ed that Braden had ​“made state­ments about being a prophet of God since the ear­ly to mid-1990s.” Friends described him as increas­ing­ly para­noid in the months before the mur­ders, as he decom­pen­sat­ed under the stress of the breakup of his rela­tion­ship. One said he ​“did not seem in touch with real­i­ty pri­or to the crime.” Burch also tes­ti­fied at tri­al in 1999 that, at the time of the mur­ders, Braden’s para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia sig­nif­i­cant­ly impaired his capac­i­ty to exer­cise ratio­nal judg­ment and con­form his con­duct to the require­ments of the law. The peti­tion also not­ed that, since incar­cer­a­tion, Braden has been con­tin­u­ous­ly treat­ed with anti-psy­chot­ic med­ica­tion to con­trol his symptoms. 

Prosecutors did not oppose Braden’s peti­tion for a sen­tence reduc­tion. ​“We saw enough dur­ing the exchange of infor­ma­tion to con­clude that a rea­son­able fact-find­er in our court would deter­mine that this indi­vid­ual qual­i­fied under the statute,” said Janet Grubb, Franklin County first assis­tant prosecuting attorney.

Terry Russell, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) of Ohio, not­ed the small num­ber of cas­es that will be eli­gi­ble for relief under the law. ​“This is not an open­ing for every­one to claim they’re men­tal­ly ill,” Russell said. ​“You can­not fake schiz­o­phre­nia. You can­not fake bipo­lar ill­ness. The symp­toms are such that when some­one is seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill, it can be rec­og­nized.” NAMI sup­port­ed the pas­sage of the bill to exempt peo­ple with seri­ous men­tal ill­ness from the death penalty.

The statute pro­vides Ohio death-row pris­on­ers one year from the law’s April 12 effec­tive date to peti­tion for resen­tenc­ing. Defendants charged with cap­i­tal crimes will be afford­ed a pre­tri­al men­tal health eval­u­a­tion and hear­ing to deter­mine their eli­gi­bil­i­ty for the death penalty. 

Ohio is the only active death-penal­ty state with such a law. Connecticut law exempt­ed from the death penal­ty those indi­vid­u­als whose men­tal capac­i­ty or abil­i­ty to con­form their con­duct to the require­ments of law was sig­nif­i­cant­ly impaired at the time of the crime, pri­or to abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty in 2012 The American Bar Association issued a white paper in 2016 advo­cat­ing for a men­tal-ill­ness exemp­tion. The Virginia Senate approved a men­tal-ill­ness exemp­tion dur­ing the Commonwealth’s 2019 and 2020 leg­isla­tive ses­sions, but the House did not take up the mea­sure. Virginia did not con­sid­er the bill in its 2021 ses­sion, but instead repealed the death penalty altogether.