Executing the mentally incompetent does not serve justice

Over the past thirty years the number of mentally incompetent people being executed has increased steadily. A person who suffers from mental retardation typically has a below average intellect and lacks the kind of adaptive behavior which normally develops during childhood. Currently, there are more than 300 people on death row know to have mental retardation. Some estimates say that 10% of the death row population may be afflicted with mental retardation. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 44 people with metal retardation have been executed in 13 different states. Of the 44 mentally retarded people executed since 1976, 14 of them have been within the past five years. In 1989, the Supreme Court admitted that "mental retardation is a factor that may well lessen a defendant's culpability for a capital offense." That same year, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution in which they stated that no one with mental retardation should be sentenced to to death or executed because to do so would violate contemporary standards of decency. Defendents with mental incompetency are unable to appreciate the consequences of their actions. Generally, people suffering from mental retardation are eager to please others. This means that they will often answer yes to questions even when they don't fully understand what they are being asked. Jerome Bowden did sign a statement confessing to murder, but only because the police told him it would be to his benefit. It was on the sole basis of this confession, would Jerome could not even read, that he was convicted and executed by the state of Georgia. Virginia executed Morris Odell Mason, who had been diagnosed as mentally retarded, in 1985. On his way to the execution chamber, he told another inmate, "When I get back, I'm gonna show him how I can play basketball as good as he can." Mason was 32 at the time of his death and clearly did not understand his impending fate. NCADP