International Pressure on U.S. to End Death Penalty for Disabled Persons
By Kay Schriner
U.S. death penalty laws - especially those permitting the execution of persons with intellectual disabilities - are increasingly controversial, both in the U.S. and around the world.
Many U.S. citizens believe that the death penalty is unfairly administered, resulting in disproportionate numbers of minorities on death row. And recent stories of death row inmates being exonerated by new DNA evidence has made it clear that at least of those waiting to die have been wrongly convicted.
The United States is out of step with world opinion about the death penalty. The European Union will not admit nations to membership unless they ban executions, and Europeans tend to view U.S. policy as a "barbaric infatuation with the death penalty," as a recent New York Times editorial put it.
Only China and Saudi Arabia execute more people than the United States. If Iraq (which is in fourth place on the list) is added in, these four countries account for more than 90% of the world's executions, according to the New York Times.
Japan, Kyrgyzstan, USA
The fact that people with mental illness and intellectual disabilities are executed in the U.S. is particularly galling to many. The United States is believed to be one of only three nations - the others being Japan and Kyrgyzstan - that permits execution of intellectually disabled persons.
Human Rights Watch, a respected watchdog group, recently issued a call on all U.S. states to ban such executions - a story we reported in a recent edition of Disability World. And now a group of nine prominent American diplomats have made the same call, saying that these executions are a "cruel and uncivilized practice." Further, they say, the practice subjected the U.S. to "daily and growing criticism from the international community."
U.S. Retired Diplomats Speak Out
The diplomats, all now retired and thus able to express their views publicly, say that U.S. policy is a constant problem in dealing with other nations. Felix G. Rohatyn, ambassador to France from 1997 to 2000, is quoted as saying "For practically the full four years I was in Paris, there was not a single speech I made where the first or second question was not: 'How can you people do this? Why do you execute the mentally retarded?'."
The diplomats say that China often uses the issue to deflect U.S. criticism of China's human rights violations. One diplomat who served in China said "The Chinese raise the issue at every possible opportunity. I would go into meetings with them, and we'd have a set of points, and for the first 20 minutes, they'd talk about the death penalty." China, which has the highly execution rate in the world, does not execute persons with intellectual disabilities.
The European Union recently asked the Ohio governor to commute the death sentence of a man with mental illness - a request that was denied. Jay Scott, a diagnosed schizophrenic, had been convicted of murdering a store owner in 1983. After repeated appeals by his attorneys and two stays of executions, Scott was put to death by lethal injection on June 14.
While 15 states and the federal government now prohibit executions of persons with intellectual disabilities, other states still permit the imposition of the death penalty.
U.S. Supreme Court to Revisit the Issue
The U.S. Supreme Court has thus far refused to find execution of persons with intellectual disabilities a violation of the constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment, but will re-visit the question soon. It has accepted the case of Ernest P. McCarver, a North Carolina man sitting on death row who has an I.Q. of 67. The case is being watched closely.
Information for this story was taken from the following sources:
The World's View of Executions (editorial), The New York Times, June 13, 2001, p. A30
Bush Signs Florida Bill to Ban Executions of Retarded Killers, The New York Times, June 13, 2001, p. A23
Ohio is Asked to Commute Sentence, The New York Times, June 13, 2001, p. A23
Veteran U.S. Envoys Seek End to Execution of Retarded (by Raymond Bonner), The New York Times, June 10, 2001, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/01world/10DEAT.html?ex=993164801&ei=1&en=3e46c0333f63caf7
Taft says Murderer Must Die (by John McCarthy), The Cincinnati Enquirer, April 11, 2001, available at http://enquirer.com/editions/2001/04/11/loc_taft_says_murderer.html
Killer Scott is Executed by Injection (by Spencer Hunt), The Cincinnati Enquirer, June 15, 2001, available at http://enquirer.com/editions/2001/06/15/loc_killer_scott_is.html
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