Title: Mental Illness | Death Penalty Information Center
Headings: Mental Illness
Mental Illness
Resources on Severe Mental Illness and Death Penalty
DPIC Report: Battle Scars
Overview
At Issue
What DPIC Offers
STUDIES — Junk Psychological Science Continues to Infect Death-Penalty Determinations
News & Developments
Arbitrariness
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of April 26 , 2021
Mental Illness
Florida Bars From Medical Practice Psychiatrist Who Repeatedly Testified that Severely Mentally Ill Death-Row Prisoners Were ​ ‘ Malingering’
Innocence
Arizona AG Asks Court to Set Execution Dates, Sparking Broad Backlash
Mental Illness
With Overwhelming Bipartisan Support, Kentucky House Passes Bill to Ban Death Penalty for Defendants with Serious Mental Illness
Mental Illness
Harris County DA Seeks to Vacate Sentence for Nation’s Longest-Serving Death-Row Prisoner
Intellectual Disability
‘ This is Not Justice’ — Federal Execution Spree Ends with Planned Execution of African-American on Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday
Mental Illness
Supreme Court Vacates Stays of Execution, Paves Way for Late-Night Execution of Lisa Montgomery
Mental Illness
Ohio Bars Death Penalty for People with Severe Mental Illness
International
Human Rights Tribunal Calls for Stay of Execution for Lisa Montgomery
Mental Illness
Coalition of More Than 1, 000 Advocates Urge Federal Government to Halt December 8 Execution of Lisa Montgomery

Content: Mental health issues have broad impact in death-penalty cases. One in ten prisoners executed in the United States are “volunteers” — defendants or prisoners who have waived key trial or appeal rights to facilitate their execution. Mental illness also affects defendants’ decisions to represent themselves, their ability to work with counsel, and jury’s perceptions of their motives and whether they pose a future danger to society if they are sentenced to life in prison. At Issue
There are at least three hurdles to excluding the severely mentally ill: 1. Unlike age and intellectual ability, it is difficult to define the class of mentally ill defendants who should be exempted and to determine whether their illness affected their judgment when they offended. 2. States have so far been reluctant to adopt such bans, though society continues to evolve in terms of its understanding of mental illness. 3. The membership of the Supreme Court has shifted since some of the earlier exemptions were decided.