Amnesty says U.S. executes many mentally ill (Reuters)

[Up2Late]

(According to Gallup, "...64 percent of Americans (still) favored the death penalty!?! Disgusting.)

Amnesty says U.S. executes many mentally ill

Mon Jan 30, 2006 07:10 PM ET

By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At least 10 percent of the first 1,000 people executed in the United States since 1977, were severely mentally ill, Amnesty International said in a report issued on Monday. The London-based human rights organization, which opposes all forms of capital punishment, said the practice of putting to death people with serious mental illnesses offended international standards of decency.

"For the USA to be pursuing this premeditated ritualistic killing in the 21st century of offenders suffering from serious mental illness is particularly offensive to widely held standards of decency," Amnesty said. The number of people executed in the United States since 1977, when the Supreme Court ended a 10-year moratorium on capital punishment, passed 1,000 last month with the December 2 execution of Kenneth Boyd in North Carolina.

Amnesty said a review of psychiatric examinations, medical records and documented cases of extreme behavior found at least 100 of the condemned prisoners had clearly cataloged cases of severe mental illness. In other cases it was impossible to determine whether inmates were mentally ill since many never received a thorough psychiatric examination.

(clip)

PANETTI CASE

The report cited the case of Scott Panetti, sentenced to death in 1995 for killing his parents-in-law. He has a long history of hospitalizations for mental illnesses that cause him to experience hallucinations. Panetti represented himself at his trial where he dressed as a cowboy, rambled, asked irrational questions and scared jurors. His case remains under appeal.

(more at links below)

<http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=11028431&src=rss/domesticNews>

Page 2

[Judi Lynn]

1. There are some among us so bloodthirsty and angry, they don't care

what the circumstances are as long as everyone gets killed who is accused.

Here's an article which illustrates Fox News' use of the airwaves to sell their pro-capital punishment position:

http://www.newshounds.us/2005/02/09/killer_instinct.php

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

You undoubtedly remember the Texas retarded man mentioned in this article who asked the guard to keep his dessert for him until he got back from his execution. So damned sad.

[EFerrari]

2. What standards of decency?

:kick:

[K-W]

3. The poor mentally ill have the status of animals in this country.

We put them out on the streets and when they attack a human we put them down.

[Up2Late]

5. That is so true. If you missed it, you should see this FRONTLINE from July

called "The New Asylums" <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/>

It goes inside the Ohio Penal system (one of the best, I think, at dealing with the Mentally Ill). It really shows the problem well.

You can watch it on-line, and/or read the transcript at the links below:

<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/etc/script.html>

<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/>

[Bozita]

8. Saw it - 5 stars! - Your choice: MUST SEE or MUST READ

from the show transcripts:

"Being placed in a solitary situation is like being placed in a prison's prison," McEachron tells FRONTLINE. "And that's worse than simply being taken from society and placed in prison."

Eventually, a majority of mentally ill inmates are released back into the community, generally with a limited amount of medication, little preparation, and sometimes no family or support structure. "We release people with two weeks' worth of medication. Yet it appears that it's taking three months for people to actually get an appointment in the community to continue their services … and if they don't have the energy and/or the insight to do that, they're going to fall through the cracks and end up back in some kind of criminal activity," warns Debbie Nixon-Hughes, chief of the mental health bureau of the Ohio Department of Corrections.

Within six days of being paroled in 2000, inmate Sigmon Clark, a paranoid schizophrenic, was rearrested for robbery. "Six days with $75 in my pocket. Fare the best way you can, man. We done took 12 years out of your life, and you're mentally ill … do what you can for yourself," Clark tells FRONTLINE.

Some feel change will be difficult to implement.

"Many of those persons who would have been in state hospitals are now in state prisons," Wilkinson says. "I've actually had a judge mention to me before that, 'Hey, we hate to do this, but we know the person will get treated if we send this person to prison.'"

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. wait til they define liberal thought as a mental illness.

That won't be long now, not with Alito on the bench.

[nolabels]

6. Damn speed reading again, thought it said "EXECUTIVES"

First dude that came to my mind was Chimpy

A scandalous threesome: Chimpy, DeLay and Abramoff
Friday, May 06, 2005
http://www.pamspaulding.com/weblog/2005/05/scandalous-threesome-chimpy-delay-and.html

[Up2Late]

7. That's funny! And so True...

...

[OneBlueSky]

9. one of the reasons I never fully trusted Bill Clinton . . .

was his decision to not commute the death sentence of a severely mentally retarded man in Arkansas during his first campaign . . . I assume because he was afraid it might not play well politically . . . from that point on, I took everything he said and did with a good dose of skepticism . . .

[saigon68]

10. Yes Bill really showed some back bone

When he made a special trip back to Ark to fry the Special Olympian