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"The Undiscovered Country: Execution Competency & Comprehending Death"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this new piece by Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier now available on SRRN. Here is the abstract: The United States Supreme Court has not created a clear Eighth Amendment standard to determine whether or not a capital defendant is competent to be executed. Justice Thomas best summarized the confusion about the Court?s jurisprudence in this area when he criticized the 2007 majority?s opinion in Panetti v. Quarterman as ?a half-baked holding.? This Article addresses one execution competency issue that has been left open by the Court: the question of to what extent a mentally ill capital defendant must understand the concept of death.  In other words, to be competent to be executed, must a mentally ill defendant comprehend that execution means the end of one?s physical life? This Article considers the historical development of the ban on executing the insane, a ban with a murky history that has been passed down from medieval times and through Blackstone and English common law to modern day international law...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on February 05, 2010 (boomark / email).