Abstract
In 1986, the USSC ruled that it was a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution (cruel and unusual punishment) to execute someone who was ‘insane’. (Ford v. Wainwright) In capital cases, a sentencing proceeding has, for many years, consisted of a jury hearing ‘aggravating factors’ from the state and ‘mitigating factors’ from the defense. Defense attorneys are now able to proffer someone’s mental health history as a possible mitigating factor in capital cases, arguing that the mental illness played some role in the commission of the crime, and that therefore, the defendant should be sentenced to life imprisonment rather than death. A case called Eddings v. Oklahoma (1982) argued in front of the USSC resulted in a finding that the defense is entitled to use any possible mitigating evidence in a capital trial. Of course, the prosecution wants to present a strong case for capital punishment and therefore will present aggravating factors that include the defendant’s propensity for violent behavior. Unfortunately, all too often these predictions of dangerousness are made in expert testimony where the expert is unaware of the real limitations documented in the research of predicting future violent behavior. In 2002, the USSC ruled that it was unconstitutional (again Eighth Amendment violation) to execute a mentally retarded defendant (Atkins v. Virginia). Unfortunately, several individual states adopted rather idiosyncratic definitions of mental retardation and some allowed the artificial inflation of I.Q. scores based on testimony that it was an ‘ethnic adjustment’. This chapter describes some of the ways mental health professionals can work in death penalty clinics with defense attorneys or with state prosecutors on these cases.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Bentele, U., & Bowers, W. J. (2000). How jurors decide on death: Guilt is overwhelming, aggravation requires death and mitigation is no excuse. Brooklyn Law Review, 66, 1011.
Fabian, J. (2009). Mitigating murder at capital sentencing: An empirical and practical psycho-legal strategy. Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice, 9, 1–34.
Haney, C. (2005). Death by design. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D. O. (1998). Guilty by reason of insanity. Janus Books.
Meloy, J. R. (2000). Violence risk and threat assessment. Specialized Training Services.
Shapiro, D., Ferguson, S., Hernandez, K., & Akl, S. (2016). Mitigating factors in capital sentencing. Poster presented at American Psychological Association, August, 2016.
Shapiro, D. L., Ferguson, S., Hernandez, K., Kennedy, J., & Black, R. (2019). Ethnic adjustment abuses in forensic assessment of intellectual abilities. Practice Innovations, 4, 265–281.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Walker, L.E., Shapiro, D., Akl, S. (2020). Death Penalty Cases. In: Introduction to Forensic Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44470-9_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44470-9_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-44468-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-44470-9
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)