And a Life for a Life
We are about to become a nation that excutes the mentally ill, for crimes committed in the throes of mental illness. At least that’s the case if the state of Arkansas goes through with the execution of a mentally ill inmate.
Singleton was 19 when he stabbed Mary Lou York to death while robbing a small grocery store in Hamburg, Arkansas. She identified him before she died. In 1979 he was convicted and sentenced to death.
A prison psychiatrist in 1997 diagnosed Singleton as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. That same year, a prison medication review panel ordered Singleton to take antipsychotic drugs after finding he posed a danger to himself and to others.
After the medication took effect, Singleton’s psychotic symptoms abated and Arkansas made plans to execute him.
Singleton’s attorneys filed a lawsuit arguing the state could not constitutionally restore his client’s mental competency through the use of forced medication and then execute him.
In October 2001, a panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Singleton be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The state of Arkansas appealed, and last February a sharply divided full 8th Circuit Court lifted a stay of execution for Singleton.
The court said that since Singleton now voluntarily takes medication and because Arkansas has an interest in having sane inmates, the side effect of sanity should not affect Singleton’s sentence.
Last October, the Supreme Court declined without comment to hear the Singleton case.
It’s seems an odd choice to be faced with: stay crazy and live, or get treatment and die. Of course, that’s assuming one even “believes in” mental illness. (I’ve talked to people who don’t.) It seems obscene that this man’s voluntary taking of medication opened the door for his execution for a crime he committed in the throes of an untreated mental illness.
I’ve said before that I’m against the death penalty. There are a number of arguments that can be made against it, such as it’s disproportionate application or lack of deterrence. Other people have made those arguments much better than I could here.
My objection stems from two things: the fallibility of our justice system, and the finality of the sentence. The fallibility of our system has been pretty well documented. Mistakes are made, and sometimes outright corruption influences outcomes, or perhap simple lack of technology (in the case of DNA evidence) causes the wrong person to be convicted, sentenced and imprisoned. The Innocence Project, for example, features stories of those who’ve been wrongfully imprisoned - in some cases on death row - as well as statistics on the causes of wrongful convictions. The site also features stories of those who have been released from prison upon proof of their innocence.
That’s the crux of it for me. A person who is wrongfully convicted and imprisoned can at least be released, though he/she can not get back the lost years of life. But there’s nothing that can be done for a person who is wrongfully executed. And given the fallibility of our system, and the fact that we use the death penalty as a form of punishment, it seems to be a forgone conclusion that we have and will execute people for crimes they did not commit.
I’m no lawyer, but it seems to me our justice system recognizes and allows for its own fallibility. That’s why we have the lengthly appeals process that so many people complain about (perhaps advocates of speedy execution): to ensure that a person accused has received a fair trial, a competent defence, and has every possible opportunity to prove her/her innocence.
I’ve spoken with people who suggest that the existance of the appeals process and the fact that the Innocence Project has uncovered cases of wrongful conviction and gotten people released shows that our system catches and corrects its mistakes. My question is: all of them? To believe that one would have to believe that mistakes do not occur in our justice system, or that every single mistake or occurance of corruption is caught and corrected. If not, the odds are that we have executed innocent people in the past, and will do so again in the future. Unless we does away with the realities of fallibility and corruption in the system, or corrects each and every occurance, we can’t guarantee that we have not and will not execute people for crimes they did not commit.
Of course, the next argument is that it hasn’t been proven that a single innocent person has been executed in this country. That, for some is evidence that it hasn’t happened. Ever. But the reality is that cases are seldom reopened and investigated once execution is carried out. In fact, states (naturally, not wanting to be shown to have executed someone proven innocent) vigorously resist reopening such cases, and usually restrict or deny access to vital evidence in state posession; leaving advocates for the executed with little hard evidence. Our system is not set up to prove the innocense of anyone the state has already executed. So, the lack of a verifiable case of wrongful execution does not prove that no such event has ever occured.
I’ve heard the argument that if someone is on death row, then it’s likely he or she committed some crime that justifies that sentence, even if not the one for which he or she was convicted. The problem with that justification is that it almost entirely shoves aside the notion that a person accused of a crime has the right to due process to prove his or her innocense of that crime. We don’t - or we shouldn’t - imprison people on the basis of crimes we think they probably committed. We imprison people based on the process of examining the evidence available to determine innocence or guilt within a reasonable doubt. So, if someone is on death row for a murder he didn’t commit, but was tried and convicted for, but did commit another murder for which he was never caught, charged tried or convicted, he is wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. Before he can be imprisoned for the undiscovered murder, there has to be evidence, a trial, deliberation, etc. If he’s proven innocent of the crime that got him sent to death row, he gets released - not held on the basis of what we think he might have done.
So, it seems to me that willingness to accept the death penalty as part of our justice system also implies a willingness to accept that occasionally an innocent person will be executed, though our system will do its best to spare us verification of such an execution. That’s something I can’t bring myself to do.