Despite a 2002 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that intellectually disabled people are ineligible for the death penalty, Warren Hill? is scheduled to be executed on January 27, 2015 in the state of Georgia. The SCOTUS ruling does leave it up to the individual states to determine the level of an inmate’s disability, and therein lies the rub. Lower courts have twice ruled that Hill meets the threshold of mental disability based on the ?preponderance of evidence.” Georgia, however, is choosing to take advantage of the ambiguity of the SCOTUS ruling by deciding that Mr. Hill does not meet its extremely high burden of proof.
According to one of Hill’s attorneys, Brian Kammer,
“Many prominent leaders in the field of intellectual disability agree that Mr. Hill should not face execution because he is a person with lifelong intellectual disability. The only reason that he is now at risk of execution is that Georgia’s standard ? requiring capital defendants to prove they have intellectual disability ?beyond a reasonable doubt? ? is not science-based and inherently denies people like Mr. Hill from receiving the protection which the U.S. Supreme Court has ordered.”
The idea of executing someone who probably does not have the capability of distinguishing between right and wrong is simply beyond the pale.
In keeping with my politics and my conscience, I don’t believe the death penalty is ever justified. Murder is murder, no matter who commits it. I don’t like the fact that my tax dollars support this practice. I don’t believe that capital punishment is a deterrent, an opinion supported by an article by John J. Donohue and Justin Wolfers, among others. So, if capital punishment does not serve as a general deterrent (OK, I agree it’s a specific deterrent in that the dead cannot re-offend), that leaves vengeance as the real motivation.
Let’s not forget that over 100 death row inmates have been exonerated with DNA evidence or by some other method. These are people who were scheduled to be put to death for crimes they did not commit. This statistic lends credence to the principle that it is better to allow 100 guilty people to walk free rather than execute one innocent person.
Most first-world countries have abolished the death penalty and many look upon the U.S. as barbaric for retaining the practice. If the U.S. insists on using capital punishment, why all the secrecy surrounding it? For example, Ohio is trying to pass a ?death penalty secrecy law? that states ?people and entities that assist in executions must be protected from harassment and possible physical harm.? More and more drug companies are balking at supplying the drugs used in lethal injection executions. This leads to a shortage of these drugs, which in turn leads to the state turning to smaller drug companies and compounding pharmacies to procure untested and unreliable concoctions. The problem with this approach is that more and more executions are being ?botched,” i.e. not carried out quickly and painlessly in keeping with the tenet of avoiding cruel and unusual punishment.
I believe there is some merit to the calls for ?open? executions; if Americans who support the death penalty actually had to watch an execution, they might lose their bloodlust.
