Justice For the Mentally Retarded By: Raavin R Evans

        “A difficult breach birth left Johnny Paul Penry with organic brain damage, which was compounded during infancy and early childhood by his mother's brutal beatings. A paranoid schizophrenic herself, she hit her son on the head, broke his arms several times, dipped him in scalding water, burned him with cigarette butts, and forced him to eat his own feces and drink urine. She routinely locked him in his room without food, water, or sanitary facilities for twelve to fourteen hours at a time, then beat him when he could not help defecating in his room.

      

          Johnny Paul Penry dropped out of first grade, and as an adult his mental age is still comparable to the average six and a half-year-old child. His I.Q. has been measured between 50 and the low sixties. (The average I.Q. is 100). His aunt spent a year just trying to teach him to sign his name. In 1979, Penry was accused of the murder of Pamela Mosely Carpenter in Livingston, Texas, and he confessed to the police. Although he could not read or write, name the days of the week or months of the year, count to one hundred, say how many nickels are in a dime, or name the President of the United States, Penry was sentenced to death by a Texas jury.

     
       Ruling on Penry's appeal, the U. S. Supreme Court held in 1989 that the U.S. Constitution did not prohibit the execution of persons with mental retardation. It overturned Penry's sentence and ordered a retrial, however, because the jury's instructions did not permit it to give effect to the mitigating evidence of Penry's mental retardation and childhood abuse. At Penry's second trial, the judge presented the jury with essentially the same flawed sentencing instructions as at the first trial and Penry was sentenced to death once more. The Supreme Court has stayed his execution pending consideration of his appeal. Oral argument in his case is scheduled for March 27, 2001”

          Dating back as early as the Fifth Century B.C.'s Roman Law of the Twelve Tablets, in the Seventh Century B.C.'s Draconian Code of Athens, in the Fourteenth Century B.C.'s Hittite Code and in Eighteenth century B.C. in the code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon, the death penalty has been the most favorable method of punishment by lawmakers for individuals who committed heinous crimes. The use of the death penalty is internationally. With a focus on the death penalty in America, Britian had the most influence on America’s use of the death penalty. The first known execution was in the new colonies, in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608 of Captain George Kendall. The death penalty has had a constant revolution of suspension and reinstatement. Before the 1960’s in America, the death penalty was considered legal and moral, because the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments were interpreted as permitting the death penalty. Later the use of the death penalty was considered as "cruel and unusual" punishment, and therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In June of 1972 with the Furman v. Georgia Supreme Court Case, The Supreme Court effectively voided 40 death penalty statutes and suspended the death penalty. Several years later, in January of 1977, execution resumed with the execution of Gary Gilmore.

       Since the introduction of the death penalty, the most utilized methods of the execution have been hanging, firing squad, gas chamber, electrocution, and the most recent, lethal injection. Currently there are 34 states that permit execution, and Texas being the number one state to date to have utilized the death penalty most often. To this day there is still much debate about whether or not the death penalty is unconstitutional. Before 2002, there was a lot of controversy surrounding the topic of whether or not individuals who are mentally retarded should be executed.

           In 1976, the death penalty was reinstated, and up until the banning in 2002, approximately thirty-five people who were mentally retarded had been executed. Individuals who are a part of such groups such as Human Rights Watch opposed the execution of mentally retarded individuals because they believed that mentally retarded individuals were incapable and had limited ability to reason along with navigate within the world. Unlike other adult criminals who do not mentally retarded, those deemed mentally retarded have grave difficulties with communication, learning, logic, strategic thinking and planning. Some may argue that it depends on their level of retardation to decide whether or not they have such difficulties. But, whatever their degree of retardation, they have difficulty learning from experience and understanding causality.

       In 2001, Governor Rick Perry of Texas decided to veto a bill that would cease execution of inmates who were considered mentally retarded. Others like Perry argue that these individuals know right from wrong, thus they knew that the crime that they were committing was wrong. Those who oppose this notion highlight that to question whether or not an individual knows right from one, is a test of criminal insanity, and most mentally retarded people are not insane.

      Often times the question of whether they committed the crime or not is up for debate because it is very easy to get a confession out of individuals who are mentally retarded. According to many health experts, this is easy because because retarded people often are susceptible to suggestion and eager to please the authorities. Also, Timothy Derning, a psychologist who has been an expert witness in capital cases around the country revealed that although they may know right from wrong they don't trust their own opinions, which causes them to confess.

           Although the execution of mentally retarded individuals no longer occurs, it is shocking and disappointing that this ruling was not made earlier. Lives that could have been spared have been lost, and no use of precedent can bring them back. Although that fight has been won, the next battle to be won is the elimination of the death penalty as a whole.