Reflection Like most criminal justice practices, the execution of the mentally ill has its ethical shortcomings. As previously state, the only criminals who are currently excluded from the death penalty are the legally insane and juveniles. The legally insane are defined as those who cannot distinguish right from wrong. In my opinion, there are many types of people in the world who, although they are not insane, they too are unable to differentiate right and wrong. They are mentally ill to the degree that they can’t make the distinction but they are not exempt from capital punishment. It is possible for a mentally ill person to make a bad choice that results in a crime. We have to consider that person’s mental illness when determining their guilt. If said mental illness is determined to have controlled in full or in part, the criminal should be deemed less culpable, so much so that the death penalty would be off the table. They were not in a clear mental state when they committed the crime and therefore couldn’t choose otherwise. Since determinism says that everything happens as a result of something else, one could argue that mental illness is a biological basis for behavior. It would not be fair to execute someone who was born with mental retardation, for example, for the reason that they were predetermined to think, feel, …show more content…
The social contract, in a nut shell, says that we should treat others the way we would want to be treated. The obvious implications of this theory are that we shouldn’t lie to someone, we shouldn’t steal from someone, and we shouldn’t kill someone, among countless others. But what doesn’t make sense to me is that if we should treat others how we want to be treated, shouldn’t we protect the mentally ill from execution? Many times they are not able to protect themselves, and we would want others to protect us if we were the mentally
Yet, many jurisdictions using the death penalty have allowed provisions exempting the mentally incompetent from execution. American law recognizes additional reason for exclusion, including issues focusing on retribution, the ability to provide information for the appeals process, and the ability to psychological prepare for death (Brodsky et al., 1999). Although these exclusions are in place, there is still a need to evaluate an inmate’s competency.
When a person thinks about doing something in 0.3 seconds, the first thing the person thinks is, impossible, but there is actually a lot a human can do in that time. That blink of a second can send a signal to the brain that decides the fate of the person. Luckily, humans have free-will, or so they believe, but what happens if in those 3 milliseconds the choice made was not the person’s choice? David Eagleman’s “The Brain on Trial” is categorized in his specialty of neurolaw, and focuses on how mental illness has a major factor of who commits murder or commits some other horrendous act. The need for this type of behavior comes from a problem in their brain, so is it fair to imprison someone who has no control over their actions? Eagleman answers the previous question by constructing his article with concrete evidence and cause and effect
Since the beginning of modern law, capital punishment has been present in our world. Ranging from the guillotine to lethal injection, over time people have discovered more “humane” ways to execute a convicted criminal. Opinions on the subject may vary depending on certain situations, such as the victim being a family member or close friend. Although there are solid pro-arguments for the death penalty I believe there is enough evidence that implies it should not be legal in any way, shape or form.
... the chemicals in their brain are being manipulated from the illness. Since the chemicals in their brain are being constantly manipulated, they are never in their right mind. People who are not mentally stable are unable to make the correct decisions because of the chemical imbalance in their brain; this is why guns need to stay out of the hands of the mentally ill. The government needs to take the initiative and put into law that when a person is trying to acquire a gun, the applicant needs to go through a criminal background check and a medical background check as well. People with mental illnesses should not have possession of guns because there is an increased risk of violence, people with mental illnesses are not mentally stable, and the United States Government does not do the correct screening and background checks that are needed in order to own a gun.
Prior to taking this course, I generally believed that people were rightly in prison due to their actions. Now, I have become aware of the discrepancies and flaws within the Criminal Justice system. One of the biggest discrepancies aside from the imprisonment rate between black and white men, is mental illness. Something I wished we covered more in class. The conversation about mental illness is one that we are just recently beginning to have. For quite a while, mental illness was not something people talked about publicly. This conversation has a shorter history in American prisons. Throughout the semester I have read articles regarding the Criminal Justice system and mental illness in the United States. Below I will attempt to describe how the Criminal Justice system fails when they are encountered by people with mental illnesses.
The issue of executing mentally ill criminals has been widely debated among the public. They debate on whether it is right or wrong to execute a person who does not possess the capacity to think correctly. The mental illness is a disease that destroys a person’s memory, emotion, and prevent one or more function of the mind running properly. The disease affects the way a person thinks, feels, behaves and relates to others.When a person is severely mentally ill, his/ her ability to appreciate reality lack so they aspire to do stuff that is meaningless. The sickness is triggered by an amalgamation of genetic, and environmental factors not a personal imperfection. On the death penalty website, Scott Panetti who killed his mother in-law and father-in-law reports that since 1983, over 60 people with mental illness or retardation have been executed in the United States (Panetti). The American Civil Liberties Union says that it is unconstitutional to execute someone who suffered from an earnest mental illness (ACLU).Some people apply the term crazy or mad to describe a person who suffers from astringent psychological disorders because a mad person look different than a mundane human being. The time has come for us to accept the fact that executing mentally ill offenders is not beneficial to society for many reasons. Although some mentally ill criminals have violated the law, we need to sustain a federal law that mentally ill criminals should not be put to death.
The insanity defense presents many difficult questions for the legal system. It attracts attention beyond its practical significance (it is seldom used successfully) because it goes to the heart of the concept of legal responsibility. ‘‘Not guilty by reason of insanity’’ generally requires that as a result of mental illness the defendant was unable to distinguish right from wrong at the time of the crime. The many difficult and complex questions presented by the insanity defense have led some in the legal community to hope that neuroscience might help resolve some of these problems, but that hope is not likely to be realized. (Smith 475)
The insanity defense pertains that the issue of the concept of insanity which defines the extent to which a person accused of crimes may be alleviated of criminal responsibility by reason of mental disease. “The term insanity routinely attracts widespread public attention that is far out of proportion to the defense’s impact on criminal justice” (Butler,133). The decision of this defense is solely determined by the trial judge and the jury. They determine if a criminal suffers from a mental illness. The final determination of a mental disease is solely on the jury who uses evidence and information drawn from an expert witness. The result of such a determination places the individual accused, either in a mental facility, incarcerated or released from all charges. Due to the aforementioned factors, there are many problems raised by the insanity defense. Some problems would be the actual possibility of determining mental illness, justify the placement of the judged “mentally ill” offenders and the total usefulness of such a defense. In all it is believed that the insanity defense should be an invalid defense and that it is useless and should potentially be completely abolished.
Brannan's argument that his death sentence was unconstitutional because it is unconstitutional to execute persons who have severe mental illness. The court cited Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), which held the execution of juvenile offenders as unconstitutional and Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), which held the execution of mentally retarded offenders as unconstitutional, when it noted that unlike those cases, there was no consensus in the United States or Georgia that illustrates that evolving standards of decency necessitate any constitutional ban on executing all persons with mental illness (Franklin Bordenave). People with mental illness mainly uses the violence of guns than anything else. Harvard once said that although a subset of people with psychiatric disorders commit assaults and violent crimes, findings have been inconsistent about how much mental illness contributes to this behavior. Harvard also said that highly publicized acts of violence by people with mental illness affect more than public perception. Clinicians are under pressure to assess their patients for potential to act in a violent way. Although it is possible to make a general assessment of relative risk, it is impossible to predict an individual, specific act of violence, given that such acts tend to occur when the perpetrator is highly emotional. Robert once said “In prehistoric time’s man’s
If the death penalty has been declared legal, then the federal and state governments must employ it to its fullest as a means of stopping previous murderers from recommitting their crimes. Since most of the prisoners on death row are there for murder, executing them would ensure that they would never kill again. Obsessive murderers, who know no alternative to killing, need to be executed to protect both prison guards and society. This view is perhaps best illustrated through the words of Judge Alfred J. Talley of New York who explained “If I as an individual have the right to kill in self defense, why has not the state, which is nothing more than an aggregation of individuals, the same right to defend itself against unjust aggression and unjust attack?” (Kaplan 28) About two and a half years ago, my dear cousin, Jaime, became the first victim of a serial killer named Brian Duffy.
Crime can be described combination between both behavior and mental factors. This will prove incredibly crucial in the definition of crime in relation to mental illness. Many of those that commit crimes are not convicted due to their illness so it is important to note, for the purpose of this analysis, that all illegal activity is considered crime, regardless of conviction (Monahan and Steadman 1983).
People should know more about what some mental ill people can actually do. Some of them might act deviant and break informal social rules. For example, when a person suffers from schizophrenia randomly talks in places where he is supposed to be quiet because of his imaginations. Moreover, some mental ill are just crazy and they commit big crimes breaking the law, school shootings or at public places. According to an article written by Adam Peck “2014 is off to a deadly start: in the first 14 school days of the year, there have been at least seven school shootings. For sake of comparison, there were 28 school shootings in all of 2013, according to gun violence prevention group Moms Demand Action” (Peck, 1014). These tragedies look unprovable to affect a friend or a family member, but statistics actually show this happens way too often around the country. Most of the people do not realize the magnitude of the situation until they affect themselves or someone they care about. Laws can punish these kind of criminals, but they do not compensate the families and friends that have been affected.
Americans have argued over the death penalty since the early days of our country. In the United States only 38 states have capital punishment statutes. As of year ended in 1999, in Texas, the state had executed 496 prisoners since 1930. The laws in the United States have change drastically in regards to capital punishment. An example of this would be the years from 1968 to 1977 due to the nearly 10 year moratorium. During those years, the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment violated the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. However, this ended in 1976, when the Supreme Court reversed the ruling. They stated that the punishment of sentencing one to death does not perpetually infringe the Constitution. Richard Nixon said, “Contrary to the views of some social theorists, I am convinced that the death penalty can be an effective deterrent against specific crimes.”1 Whether the case be morally, monetarily, or just pure disagreement, citizens have argued the benefits of capital punishment. While we may all want murders off the street, the problem we come to face is that is capital punishment being used for vengeance or as a deterrent.
Mental health and the criminal justice system have long been intertwined. Analyzing and understanding the links between these two subjects demands for a person to go in to depth in the fields of criminology, sociology, psychology, and psychiatry, because there are many points of view on whether or not a person’s criminal behavior is due to their mental health. Some believe that an unstable mental state of mind can highly influence a person’s decision of committing criminal actions. Others believe that mental health and crime are not related and that linking them together is a form of discrimination because it insinuates that those in our society that suffer from poor mental health are most likely to become a criminal due to their misunderstood behavior not being considered a normality in society. In this report I will go into detail of what mental health and mental illness is, what the differentiates a normal and a mentally unstable criminal, give examples of criminal cases where the defendant’s state of mind was brought up, introduce theories surrounding why one would commit crimes due to their mental health, and lastly I will discuss how the criminal justice system has been modified to accommodate mental health issues.
In his proposal “Severe Personality-Disordered Defendants and the Insanity Plea in the United States,” George Palermo, a forensic psychiatrist, presents his thesis for the insanity plea to be reversed back to its previous definition. People who had personality disorders that could cause them to become psychotic for even a brief moment used to be eligible to receive the verdict not guilty by reason of insanity, before the United States restricted it to only people affected by mental illnesses. A mental illness is a disorder such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, which can cause a person to be unable to determine whether an act is right or wrong. It d...