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The death penalty and mental illness

By Douglas A. Berman

Now available here from SSRN is Professor Bruce Winick's new paper titled "The Supreme Court's Emerging Death Penalty Jurisprudence: Severe Mental Illness as the Next Frontier."  Here is the abstract: The Supreme Court's 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia and 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons marked a significant new direction in Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.  This Article explores the Court's emerging conception of proportionality under the Eighth Amendment, which also is reflected in its 2008 decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana.  The Article analyzes the application of this emerging approach in the context of severe mental illness.  It argues that the Court can extend Atkins and Roper to severe mental illness even in the absence of a legislative trend away from using the death penalty in this context...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on November 07, 2008 (boomark / email).