Connecticut Supports State-sponsored Suicide
Some may regard this as an efficient way to deal with Ross. After all, he had confessed to the crimes of which he was accused, and he spared the state the expense of a potentially lengthy appeals process. However, aside from the usual arguments by death penalty opponents, in this case the state may have failed to adequately consider Ross’s mental state.
Psychiatric evaluations gave mixed results. Ultimately, a superior court judge pronounced him competent despite compelling evidence to the contrary, and Ross was hastily put to death.
Do we really want to be so quick to risk erring on the side of death?
The execution of a person with a mental illness is clearly prohibited by international law. In April 2000, the UN Commission on Human Rights urged all states that maintain the death penalty “not to impose it on a person suffering from any form of mental disorder.”
Despite this international convention, however, in recent years Texas, Florida, Alabama, and Missouri have executed convicts who had been diagnosed with mental illness. Now, by rushing to execute Michael Ross, Connecticut may have joined this dark league.
In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded. Then, on March 1, 2005, it banned the execution of juvenile offenders who were under 18 when they committed their crimes. I hope that someday it will also ban the execution of the mentally ill.
If we are to consider ourselves to be a culture of life, a culture of decency, and a culture of morality, we must progress beyond this culture of revenge and this culture of executing the ill whom we somehow judge to be disposable. If we get there, perhaps the U.S. can regain some respect amongst our European counterparts, most of whom have long since abolished the death penalty in their countries and view our rentionist policies as backward and barbaric.
Human Rights Watch has estimated that as many as 10 percent of death row inmates suffer from a serious mental illness. The organization stated in a 2003 report that “mental illnesses are very different disorders than mental retardation, but they still may cause lapses in judgment, inappropriate or dangerous behavior, and interfere with a person’s ability to think clearly and make sound decisions. It is as cruel and senseless to execute those who are mentally ill as it is to execute those with mental retardation.”
Most of the world’s democracies, and even some dictatorships, agree.
A civilized society should be committed to treating its mentally ill, not executing them.
