STUDIES: 21^st-Century Executions Disproportionately Involve Defendants With Mental Illness

A new study of the case records of the men and women exe­cut­ed in the United States between 2000 and 2015 has found that 21^st-cen­tu­ry exe­cu­tions dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly involve pris­on­ers diag­nosed with men­tal ill­ness and who have expe­ri­enced trau­mat­ic child abuse. 

In The Washington Post​’s data fea­ture, Monkey Cage, Professor Frank Baumgartner and Betsy Neill of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill write that “[m]ost Americans oppose the death penal­ty for the men­tal­ly ill. But our research sug­gests that the death penal­ty actu­al­ly tar­gets those who have men­tal ill­ness­es.” The authors’ exam­i­na­tion of case files found that 43% of the exe­cut­ed pris­on­ers had received a men­tal ill­ness diag­no­sis at some point in their lives, more than dou­ble the 18% of peo­ple in the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion who have ever been diag­nosed with any mental illness. 

Four per­cent of Americans have been diag­nosed with a seri­ous men­tal ill­ness. Personality dis­or­ders and depres­sion were the most com­mon­ly diag­nosed ill­ness­es among those exe­cut­ed, but exe­cut­ed death-row pris­on­ers also had sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er rates of such seri­ous dis­or­ders as schiz­o­phre­nia, post­trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der, and bipolar disorder. 

Evidence of men­tal ill­ness — and depres­sion in par­tic­u­lar — was espe­cial­ly preva­lent among those pris­on­ers who waived their appeals and ​“vol­un­teered” for exe­cu­tion. 63% of vol­un­teers had a men­tal ill­ness diag­no­sis, com­pared to 39% of oth­ers who were exe­cut­ed. More than one-quar­ter (26%) of vol­un­teers had been diag­nosed with depres­sion, 37% had doc­u­ment­ed sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies, and near­ly one-third (32%) had attempt­ed sui­cide, lead­ing the authors to sug­gest, ​“If sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies are evi­dence of men­tal ill­ness, then death penal­ty states active­ly assist suicide.” 

Rates of child­hood trau­ma — a risk fac­tor for men­tal ill­ness — were also dra­mat­i­cal­ly high­er among exe­cut­ed pris­on­ers than among the gen­er­al pub­lic. The Department of Health and Human Services esti­mates about 10% of U.S. chil­dren are abused or neglect­ed, but near­ly 40% of exe­cut­ed pris­on­ers had been abused. The study found that exe­cut­ed death row pris­on­ers were 13 times more like­ly than U.S. chil­dren as a whole to have been sex­u­al­ly abused, 13 times more like­ly to have been phys­i­cal­ly abused, and twice as like­ly to have been neglect­ed by their care­givers. According to the authors, ​“The CDC and inde­pen­dent researchers have repeat­ed­ly found that child­hood trauma’s long-term effects include high­er like­li­hoods of dis­rupt­ed neu­ro-devel­op­ment, cog­ni­tive impair­ment, men­tal ill­ness, and becom­ing the per­pe­tra­tor or vic­tim of vio­lence.” (Click here to enlarge image.)