Wednesday 17 October 2007

Sane enough to die

One of the fascinating issues in death penalty studies concerns persons who are sentenced to death and who are mentally ill. As a general rule, societies that still retain the death penalty do not execute the insane. But when is someone insane enough that they cannot be executed? And can they be medicated, forcibly, to make them sane enough for exection? These and related issues are discussed by Michael Mello in 'Executing the Mentally Ill: When Is Someone SaneEnough to Die?' (http://www.abanet.org/crimjust/cjmag/22-3/executingmentallyill.pdf), appearing in the fall2007 issue of the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section's Criminal Justice magazine, which has as its them 'The Criminally Mentally Ill'. The entire issue can be accessed at http://www.abanet.org/crimjust/cjmag/22-3/home.html.

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